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Fairy ring

10 years ago

I've heard and seen a few comments about this condition lately. Does anyone have concerns with this condition? I have several old plantings that have no center growth but still have a nice full mound when in full leaf. If I am going to dig one up for any other reason I will divide it and take out the "dead" center.

Is this condition just a natural growth process or something I should be concerned about. How do you deal with it?

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Comments (7)

thisismelissa
10 years ago
As long as it's a nice mound, I ignore it.

Another suggestion you can do is take a knife and cut out the center and fill with soil. It'll re-grow.

If the center is too matted for a knife, a reciprocating saw works great too! (works awesome for overgrown siberian iris and for ornamental grasses too.
jadie88
10 years ago
Ah, to have a hosta so big and tough that I'd need a power tool to rejuvenate it! You just gave me a new lifetime gardening goal.
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just some variation of maturity .... probably complicated by the pots .. maybe due to some historical winter problem ... like the crown rotted but enough dormant buds on the edges were OK that you never knew ... i have both of those going on 15 years.. and never had it with my plants in the ground... especially GT ... so i suspect the pots have something to do with it how often do you repot?? ... media in pots doesnt last forever ... if its old.. repot the whole thing ... hyper fertilization might also be an issue .. since i dont fert either ... if a pot got too much fert too late in the season .. then the plant may go into dormancy.. with too much soft young growth ... leading to crown rot how about repotting and just getting rid of the old center.... or dig the center out like you said ken
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I think I'm on the same page with Phil. If you can't tell once the plant fills out for the season, why care? Unless it is in some way unhealthy for the plant, it doesn't seem worth bothering over. I have noticed, as my garden matures, that some hostas seem to have different habits of the crowns growing. Some seem to send up eyes that are tightly clustered, and some more spread out. For instance, I have a very large Parhelion, and a very large Regal Splendor with about the same number of eyes on each, yet the Parhelion eyes are a neat little bundle and RS's eyes are spread out over a diameter probably 2-3 times as wide as Parhelions.
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That does look like a fairy ring! Mushrooms aren't required, nor is dead grass in the center if it's well-fed and healthy. I had a minor ring some years ago that was kind of hard to pick out from the rest of the grass, and didn't cause any problems. Higher levels of organic matter and a diverse soil biology tend to reduce the impact of or completely defeat a fairy ring. They just can't dominate if there's enough competition. One that my neighbor had spread dozens of yards on his property, but flattened out as it approached mine, and finally stopped just as it touched. It never penetrated.
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coll_123
10 years ago
I agree with Melissa- if the mound looks good when it leafs out, who cares. I believe it's a natural growth process with some of them.
User
10 years ago
Jadie, your lifetime gardening goal is a worthy one. I'm not likely to see such a thing in my garden ever. Who ever heard of a potted hosta having a fairy ring.....count me out on that one. hehehehe
Babka NorCal 9b
10 years ago
Yes, it can happen in a potted hosta. They grow out from the center to the sides, and over several years, some of them end up with nothing in the middle. Guess I've been at this way too long.

-Babka
tepelus
10 years ago
My Guacamole is doing this, but once it leafs out you don't even notice.

Karen
Mary4b
10 years ago
I was very surprised today to see that my Sunshine Glory may be getting a fairy ring....hmmmm, perhaps a good excuse to spread its glory! I LOVE that hosta! Picture is from 2007, sorry so old...

For those of you who know about my front yard hosta garden that got eliminated because of Maple trees...that's the spread of Home Depot hostas from bareroot bags that I had planted all the way across the front of my house before I knew anything about hostas. In the bags were Aureomarginata, Shade Fanfare and that more silveryblue white-edged one behind the Sunshine Glory...what is that albomarginata?
Anyway, they are all gone from there now, except for the Sunshine Glory as it was on the periphery of the Maple Tree problem.

PS....I did make a lot of $ selling those common hostas, as much as $25 a pop. People were so glad to get large ones and didn't care about names at all.

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