need some help please

[vawildflower]

Just to give you a quick overview....I grow all hosta in pots because of voles...they would eat all if I didnt...this year was a very wet and cold winter for us here in the hampton roads area of virginia....my question is...I have had several hosta that had several nice big eyes...and this year they have like one big eye and tons of little ones...Any idea what causes this...Almost like someone did the hosta stomp on them. I have noticed over time the ones that this has happened too..they dont ever seem to recouperate.
thanks
wildflower

[Ginger]

Wish I could help, but I have no idea. I grow mine in pots also, but I have not experienced that problem. Did you over winter them inside or outside? If outside maybe they stayed too wet? Maybe root bound? Hopefully someone will chime in with an answer soon.

Ginger

[jgh]

Lots of little eyes is usually a sign of damage to the crown. If the eyes that were supposed to grow this year are damaged, the plant will often respond by activating immature eyes that might have been the following year's growth.

The most common cause of this condition is crowns planted too deep. Moisture sits in the crown and rots parts of it out, activating the "lots of small eyes" response.

It can also be caused by the crown being too high. The main crown gets damaged by dehydration and the plant responds by throwing small eyes from around the edge of the crown where the roots are still feeding it.

Disease and insect pests can also do this, but usually it is depth/moisture/rotting issues.

Pots are probably particularly prone to this kind of damage, with it being easy to bury a crown too deep or to have it become exposed by growth... and damage to the center of the crown is easy to happen in a pot where moisture control can be a problem...

You could check this - carefully dig one or two up, or clear off the top inch or two of soil. See if the little eyes are coming more from the edges and if the crown is either mushy or dried out... that would help you diagnose what is happening.

[vawildflower]

thanks so much for your imput...i did go out and take one out of the pot....it obvisiously stayed a little too wet this past winter....some rot...guess this could be a on going problem considering all my hosta's are potted.

[Noreaster]

Interesting, jgh.

It seems like planting a hosta at just the right depth is a really tricky thing?

[vawildflower]

I have always been told they should be right below the surface....it is right. I think I have in the past planted to deeply but have tried hard to make sure they are higher then lower..

[jgh]

I don't think it is very tricky when you a planting in the ground, especially if the plant is unfurled and coming out of a pot. You can pretty much see what level it was at and you want to match that. In general, setting the crown just below the surface is a good guideling.

In a pot, plants tend to get heaved more by frost, or they just sort of work their way up... or they get buried deeper than intended as the soil settles down. Just a little trickier to keep them where they belong.

In the ground, it is easy for younger plants to get heaved up so the crown is exposed. I'm just digging plants I lined out last summer for sale this spring. Most of them are in great shape, but I just hit a section of 10 Red Alert. They were poor quality tc last spring, so when I put them into the holding bed they had smallish root systems. I just found that all of them have roots in the ground but the crown is exposed... it is kind of dried up and the emerging eyes are tiny. Sure wish I'd have noticed this a month ago - I would have piled more dirt over them and given them a better start.

I learned my lesson one year. I decided to divide and plant a whole bunch of big blues - Elegans or maybe just big blue sieboldianas - in some poor, dry soil beneath mature spruce trees. I knew the conditions were tough and that they might not get watered as much as they'd like as we traveled a lot in the summer. Being a good papa, I did what I'd do with other plants - planted them a little deep to give them a little more protection. The next year I got lots of little eyes... and it took several years for them to recover. Some didn't make it at all. That's when I learned about trying to protect the crowns by planting too deep and ending up rotting them and killing them...

Pretty much all the tips I share here are based on various bonehead blunders I've made!

[largosmom]

Hi, welcome back!

Laura

[Chris_W]

I had a really nice talk on the phone with VAwildflower last night and I think she solved the problem - the potting soil she is using is pine fines, and over time it composted, turning to soil. So this last year's really wet winter seems to have been the culprit - heavy soil and wet pots didn't make happy hostas

Here we mix up our own potting soil and make it really coarse and well draining, then we water the hostas very deeply, 2 or 3 times a week. I don't water every day, but really water a lot when I do water. I'm now using Sunshine Mix#1 which is coarse peat and coarse perlite, and to that we blend in about 40% pine bark mulch. We use bales of the Sunshine Mix and break it up with our chipper/shredder running at the slowest speed possible. As we feed the bale into the shredder we mix in the pine bark mulch and some slow release fertilizer and everything mixes well. We also turn the pile of potting soil afterward. By the way, I've tried Osmocote fertilizer and found that hosta roots tend to burn/rot with that in the summer. We now use slow release fertilizers, not water release fertilizers like Osmocote and have seen a huge improvement in our potted perennials.

Here is a picture of our mixed up potting soil to give you an idea of the consistency.

And Jim, I believe your description of planting Elegans in poor dry soil under spruce trees created a totally different problem that I call dry rot. Hosta crowns that fail to get enough moisture in the summer will shrivel away all summer long, even though the foliage above often looks fine. In your case the spruce trees likely stole any rain water or blocked rain entirely. Sometimes the leaves will get a little bit brown or crispy on the edges in late summer, but since sieboldianas only put out one flush of foliage per year you don't notice the effects of dry rot until the following spring. Since much of the crown withered away you end up with tiny eyes coming back from the surviving bits. From your description I'm certain that's what happened in your case, especially with the way that particular plant grows.

Hope that helps

Chris

[largosmom]

Interesting..I love the Sunshine Planting Mix which has peanut shells in it.

Laura

[John]

Interesting. I had noticed before reading this, a hosta in a container, which somehow over the winter ended up with roots and crown exposed. There was one ver large eye, and a great number of very small eyes; sounds like what is described above.

Now, should I remove the one large eye? would that encourage the others (which might remain dormant, otherwise?) to grow?

Thanks, John

[vawildflower]

Chris,

I use osmocote all the time.....if you found that it doesnt work...which one would you recommend? I used it because of the pot planting and thinking they need a little extra something they are getting from the soil and compost. Thanks again for a great conversation and excited about getting my plants!

[Hapygdnr]

I use osmocote all the time.....if you found that it doesnt work...which one would you recommend? I used it because of the pot planting and thinking they need a little extra something they aren't getting from the soil and compost.

Hello hostaphiles! Hoping you might be able to help me too... This spring when I got my potted hosta out I discovered several with roots on top of the potting mix. I know there was a discussion about this before, so did a search and came up with this thread... maybe another thread addresses the issue too.

At the time I couldn't check the hostas, but now that there's time, it's too cold and rainy, AGAIN! I did put a thin later of compost over the roots so they wouldn't be exposed.

2 yrs ago, I began removing declining plants from a bed that has become congested with competing roots from nearby trees & shrubs. So for now they will be in pots indefintely. My question is what's next? What should I do to remedy/prevent plants with exposed roots? I was also wondering about the fertilizer question too, so I quoted it. Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks. Jeanne

[thy]

vawildflower... how cold was your winther ? Did it rain or snow when it was cold ?

Due to several reasons I have had hostas standing on a piece of plastic for years and have had potted hostas too, just becaurse I liked it or didn't had the time to put them in the soil or...

If you plant a hosta in soil with a lot of compost or in potting soil the soil will decompose and if you do not fill up with new soil or compost the crowns will be exposed and exposed crown is equal to a lot of tiny eyes... they will recover, but it takes time.
The decomposing is faster when it rains a lot.
If the drainage holes are okay, they can take 24/ 7 rain for weeks... I do not know for how long, but with rain and mist and maybe a few days with dry weather.. and maybe even sun a few times, 3 months are no problem at all... this Is Denmark, only our goverment think we can get more turists in the winther
The dead center have an other reason... I just need to speak with one more hostaholic and find the nerve to say

WOW Chris what an exelent mixture you are giving your plants, you do not find that here for plants ment to be in the pot for a few months, but for pots wich have to stay for years it is needed. You are absolutely right about too strong fertilizer gives week roots, half of the ones I got this year, have the problem due to the "special" potting soil

[flowerchild59]

I have had trouble thru the years with what I guess is dry rot with heaved hostas. I have alot of rocky areas in my soil and sometimes the plants do heave with our horrible temp swings we have here.
I have dug them up and scraped off the rot areas and soaked them in bleach water. What about captan dusting prior to replanting?????