Normally when they receive the message to come up it doesn't stop but not all have received the message and mulch is the best method of keeping them dormant.

I would suggest mulch with "Reemay" or row cover/cloth over the mulch.

And anytime is the right time to mulch is will never hurt the plants. The fall is the best for keeping them dormant in the spring or fairly late winter like Feb early Mar with loose mulch which would be airy, increasing the insulation factor.

Hosta react mainly to heat as the indicator to emerge.

Mayflower

As far as adding compost to your planting beds, it really shouldn't matter when you do it. I assume you are not talking about several inches as EO suggested - I put on a heavy sprinkling (about 1/2 inch?) every spring whenever it is convenient for me. As a fertilizer, it is so mild you do not have to worry about it burning new growth.

Have fun!

Alexa

active or hot compost .... should not be used ... or should not be used too early .... we want to add nothing that would encourage the hosta to come up any faster ... hot compost would be stuff.. straight from the animal.. high in urea.. aka nitrogen ....

aged compost... whenever you want ...

you are in z5 .. i am in zone 5 .... in regard to hosta... you are sadly mistaken that spring is here ... this is the cruelest time of year.. to watch your hosta come up too early .. and watch them frosted or frozen back to the ground ... pray that it is a long cool spring.. so we can get another 30 or 45 days toward frost free date ... pips dont care... we just dont need them leafing out too soon ...

and in that vein... i prefer to not walk in the garden before they start extending.. to avoid stepping on them .. ergo.. i would not go in the beds to apply compost for a while... but i would do it before they leafed completely out.. and made application harder ...

i know its really hard to stay out of the garden beds .. .... but i have had my heart broken so many times i cant tell you ...

good luck

keep up the enthusiasm ... ken

"active or hot compost .... should not be used ... or should not be used too early" Ken

This is only a minor point, BIG BUTT don't get overly worried about hot compost, just put it on thin enough that it can't heat up. Heat requires enough thickness or height to allow a heat sink. Again if it is hot just spread it out and water.

Mayflower,
as it was said above, anytime is a good time to add compost... except now. Unless your hosta bed is only 3 feet across, refrain from walking over your hosta beds until all hostas are up and accounted for. The first pips being sort of purplish to brown in color, are often hard to identify, until you plant your food smack in the middle of it.
In the fall, after they go dormant I bring in my Cub Cadet and unload whole carts full of shredded organic matter.
Manfred

hey EO .... i always assumed.. i know.. always risky .. that HOT meant high if urea .... not necessarily that it heated up ... which of course.. it does.. because of the urea ... i guess its a vicious circle of logic ...

in spring.. the soil is all fluffy from the freeze/thaw and winter. ... fluffy good.. trodden upon not fluffy ... not good

so too much walking in there would probably be worse than the addition of the compost ...

try to work out a timing.. that you do this in fall ... go light this spring.. and double up in fall ... when we dont care if you step on them... or compact the soil ...

ken

Ken, you understand it all.

Just more detail about what you know. Urea will help or cause a compost pile to go through a heat then when the urea is used up it will cool back down.

Now the minor difference, in a pile you can lose air and it turns anaerobic (compost without air) and gets hot then with out the air movement to dissipate the heat will stay inside and accumulate (keep getting hotter) called a heat sink. If you spread out the compost and water to force cool most of the anaerobic organisms with change to aerobic (with oxygen) compost and it canÂt get hot again.

If you use hot compost thick enough to maintain conditions to stay hot it is a problem but spread thin it should not be a problem. That is one of the methods used to change a compost pile that is over heated and anaerobic to aerobic is spread it out, fluff it up and restack. That is what we did at the compost facility when we turned piles.

Finally, a little care and caution. IÂm going to stop talking about the FACT that I sometimes use 15inches of mulch because I know the size and type of material etc and can judge better than most. I would not put 15inches of un-ground leaves because they would lay flat on each other and be a problem. Anything under 4 inches will not cause a problem, again a little caution such as hot compost, spread it out a couple of days, get the heat out before you put it down.

Your point about not walking in the garden and compacting the soil is right on, walk only if you need to. A path will cause a problem under the path, not a big deal but you donÂt want to walk down the whole area if you can avoid it.

Thank you everyone for your advice. I will put down a half inch of aged compost soon. It is a large area and a fairly old bed (15 yrs) that has performed beautifully, in spite of minimal care from me. It does get plenty of water, will the mulch increase the slug population?

"I will put down a half inch of aged compost soon."

Not enough period!

"It does get plenty of water, will the mulch increase the slug population?"

Absolutely not, old wives tale. Search slugs here and you will find simple easy non-poluting or dangerous or anyway that is bad ways to deal with slugs and you should deal with them.

EO - I respectfully disagree. Putting down one half to one inch of aged compost in the spring is sufficient for an established bed.

Maylower - your plants will love it and it is a simple way to improve the soil in the bed.

Alexa

EO - I respectfully disagree. Putting down one half to one inch of aged compost in the spring is sufficient for an established bed."
Alexa

Maybe a well established bed that has sufficient organic matter all the way down into the root area. I offer that most often our soils can use much more humus than it has. From 1/2 inch you may only get 5% or less humus moving down into the soil which would be 1/20 of 1/2 inch or nothing.

I found when I first started improving pure red clay with mulch that after 3 years the soil would eat about 3 inches a year every year so it benefited from that much mulch. I reasoned that it took 3 years for the system to really get going with a large number of organisms working then it consumed about that much mulch.

I offer that Alexa is being over cautious and caution is always good advice but look at any forest, the forest gets far more than 1/2 inch a year. A meadow doesn't accumulate volume like a forest does once a year because it is losing parts of organic matter through out the summer and recycling the organic material.

I to respectfully disagree with Alexa, you in the end will figure what you want to do so please don't see this as a little fight, just a difference and IÂm saying why.

A sidebar, you canÂt really buy well composted material in a bag at a garden center or mass merchant, I know what goes in a bag because I put it in the bags and it is compost that is started or even well started but nothing like finished compost. And it doesnÂt really need to be finished compost.