Renew young stems= cutting the previous years worth of stems and letting the young ones grow? I was under the impression that the reason I wasnt getting any fruit was due to the fact that NO stems would survive into the following season, so the first third of the season was wasting time growing limbs instead of fruit. TRUE or FALSE? True:--You Protect all stems best you can and only in THE SPRING,you CUT Oldest ones Leaving YOUNG HEALTHY ONES ALONE,so the tree is still healthy and in one piece.----You do not cut everything down to grownd because if you do the tree,will be late in maturing fruits.----You only cut 2 to 3 old stems leaving 5 to 8 young stems alone.---Those cut out old stems will produce three sucker each wich you leave it alone because you will need them in the future years.This is an ongoing Process but with a little care it can give very good results.When new sucker grow you pinch and keep them small so they do not take light away from fruit producing STEMS.---Yet you do not pull them completelly out of grownd because they are your future RENEWAL Stems.CAPICHE,MIa Cara

Until this year, I was proud of the fact that I had no disease in my garden. Then I looked at So Sweet and got worried. Folks here confirmed Hosta Virus X. Then I noticed that Ginzu Knife, Brim Cup, and Ventricosa Aureomaculata all looked bad, so I bought a test kit which arrived yesterday. Ginzu and Brim are sick; Vent is okay. I dug out and discarded the three sick ones and replaced them with astilbe, fern and coral bells. Some people say not to worry because the disease won't kill them, but a post about a month ago said that it appears that snails and slugs can carry the disease from one plant to another, so leaving diseased plants in the garden is not a viable option. I think you have to discard them as soon as you're sure they're diseased, put something other than hosta in their place (the disease lasts a minimum on 18 months in the soil), then clean and disinfect your garden tools. That last step is critical to avoid spreading the disease. When I discovered that So Sweet was sick, I dug it out, then cleaned and disinfected every one of my garden tools. Now whenever I use any tools in the hosta gardens, I rinse them off and wipe them with Lysol disinfecting cloths. I sure hope that's enough. Good luck! With a collection of 300, I'm sure you don't want to have to pitch everything. And I'm also sure that many of them are not yet diseased. Good tool hygiene could bring the disease under control. Nance p.s. None of the diseased ones came from good hosta nurseries; the bad ones came from hosta society friends and sales and general nurseries.

"It would be great if you could show us a better picture of the entire plant as Steve suggested." I would if I could, but I was simply visiting the town where the hosta is. I was not expecting to see this hosta, so I took the best photo I could with my cellphone. I'm very very sorry. I love hostas and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could find out what this one was. I was just travelling. I made my husband stop the car. I'm unlikely ever to go back there. So I suppose I've learned my lesson. I'll never know. I have posted on this forum before, and I've done my best to take photos with a real camera, with rulers in the photo, closeups of the leaves, counting the vein pairs, and so forth. It just wasn't possible this time. Sorry sorry sorry. Not shiny? Not Montana? : ( Sad, sad, I am very sad. ...slinking away now...

Janet, do they have any labels with names on them? Are they all the same type of plant? Pictures would help as well as where you live; zone 7 for instance in SE seaboard USA. Not all orchids need the same conditions. Try again for answers with additional info.