Need help overwintering pain induced hosta purchases!

16 years ago

Fellow Hosta Lovers - I really need your help! My garden has had little work done on it this year as I have been having serious back problems since June - heavy duty pain pills, or so I thought, till the back stopped doing what it was doing before and did a massive herniation! Next lot of pain pills led to a disaster!

With nothing else to do, and with the pills breading down my sense defense, I have been madly bidding on eBay hostas and winning a whole lot more than I expected! I am thrilled with the purchases - but I don't know what to do with them now! Well, I do really - they are going to go into the two new hosta beds I've been dreaming about but which my DH doesn't know a thing about yet. I'm just hoping over the winter I can get him to agree that the "Slope" is too ridiculous to mow and needs to be turned into a hosta bed. He's had to do the mowing regularly for the first time since we moved here as it is usually my job...so there may be a chance I can wear him down...explaining - no more cottage garden plants being riotous, just lots of beautiful well behaved hosta islands surrounded by lovely mulch (he's got a computer/engineer type of mind which explains why that scenario could be appealing!)

But in the meantime, overwintering is my issue! BTW, I'm in CT on the Zone 5/6 line. I've been reading the posts about turning pots on their sides etc. However, many of the hosta I bought are only very small. I think they came from "liners" (six-pack sized root systems), even so, they are incredibly healthy and have amazing root systems. Some of the others are mini hosta. I've potted those up in Scotts potting soil and have them in a shaded area of the garden.

The larger hosta I won, I was able to plant in temporary places all over the garden - at least wherever the ground has sloped enough that the actual bed is behind a retaining wall and I can plant without bending over too much. (I knew I loved gardening, but I didn't realize just how important it is to my well-being - this enforced inactivity is really depressing!)

My plan for the small hosta plants was to tear my son away from his computer and have him dig up an area of a flower bed, lay out the pots, most are 2.5" square and then surround them with the soil I've made in my compost area so they can over-winter. In the spring I would then retrieve the pots and make my beds (or I'll have to go to the as yet undefined PLAN B).

However, most of the posts I've read about over wintering in pots, or planting minis or simply small plants seem to say that being outside in pots is not good for little ones.

Please does anyone have any suggestions for what I should do with these small plants to keep them as healthy as possible for spring?

I can make room for them in the garage, we have a new storage area under the sunroom, which has trellis walls, so there is air circulation, and probably some snow will come in and we have a gazebo where I could store the pots. Then there is still the area that Dan was going to dig; I can plant the hostas in rows in the soil. Oh I also have a plastic cold frame I could set up to put the plants in.

Last winter we had very little snow, quite a bit of rain and an incredibly warm January. Don't know what this year will bring, but there is no guarantee any more of a continual snow cover.

Your help would be much appreciated. I'm sorry about the length of this email - too many of my friends have been subjected to such missives due to too much time on my hands! Sorry!

Jakki

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Comments (11)

esther_opal
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
I say sit them on the soil under the porch and pile leaves about 4in deep above the pot and forget them until spring then start watching for new growth.

Do not uncover until they come up.

See this for more and many will disagree with me.

Here is a link that might be useful: overwinter
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hosta_freak
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Well,I don't know what zone you are in,but I agree with Butch. They should be fine. We don't have freeze/thaw weather down here,but I have never lost a hosta,due to freezing. Cold snaps in early spring have set back some of my growing hostas,but never lost. Your tendency,when spring comes,is to move leaves away from the hosta eyes,but resist the urge,until hostas actually grow above the leaves. Even then,there can always be late spring freezes,so you have to pay attention to weather forecasts. Last year we had a nasty freeze in April,even after our last frost date,and I had to scramble to cover all my hostas that had already come up in March! This is a little long,but I can't stress enough what Butch and I said. Phil
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BK, I agree, I like the 'finished' look of pot feet, and I do use them with my decorative patio pots, which sit on concrete or decking rather than on the ground. The link is to the thread I had in mind. It's all you ever wanted to know about the movement of water through potting media. It seemed counter-intuitive to me that raising a pot off the ground doesn't improve drainage, but that's the idea here. Basically, a rough summary is that every media has a level at which gravity alone is no longer sufficient to draw water down through it. This is called the perched water level. (Do forgive me if you already know all this...it was news to me when I started out a few years ago!) When a pot is raised off the ground, the water drains out only to that "perched" level, then it just hangs out there. Not a problem if your media is well drained (has a low perched water level), but potentially rot-inducing if your media is finer (water perches at a higher level in the pot and keeps the roots and crown wetter, longer). When the potting media is in contact with the earth, that perched water can continue to wick downwards and out. The soil acts as a sponge or a wick. Now, as someone with verrrry slow-draining clay soil, I do wonder about how different soil types effect this process. But anyway, that's kind of the Readers Digest version. What do you think? Here is a link that might be useful: Tapla's container drainage thread
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I'm with Ken Keep your eye on the prize, here... You want them to go into normal dormancy, freeze solid, stay frozen solid with no thawing and refreezing, then to have them come normally out of dormancy in the spring. A plastic cover over the pile would pretty much guarantee varmints would move into the nice warm dry area under it... and probably destroy plants. The plastic would also gather heat, encouraging unhealthy thawing and refreezing. Ken described the process well... once they are down for the season, let them freeze and stack them up someplace out of the sun to prevent uneven heat/cold cycles. Since you have straw, I'd toss it over the pile... minimizes dessication - drying of the soil by sublimation in dry, cold air... but, of course, a pile of straw once again creates a varmint home, so poison baits are a good idea. and about cutting them back... since you got them at a big box store, there is a high likelihood that at least some of them have HVX. It would be very easy to spend a couple of hours cutting all of them back and using your shears to spread the disease through the whole lot of them. Since sterilizing your cutter between each of that many plants seems impossible, I'd just wait until the freeze takes them down for good, then pull all the foliage off with my hands while stacking them for the winter. And just for ultra-safety purposes, I'd put all that foliage someplace it couldn't put the virus back into my garden... if you have a neighborhood gardener you don't like, put it in their compost pile...
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If you have an unheated but bright window I think that would be fine, or simply leave them outside and move indoors when cold weather is predicted. moveing them in and out would be a pain, but you don't have all that many subfreezing nights so it shouldn't be too bad. If I was saving cuttings I'd put a couple of dozen in a pot together. The larger pot (compared to small, individual pots) seems to maintain more uniform soil moisture and promote rooting, and it is a lot easier to take care of all winter. In the spring the ones that have rooted can be separated and planted individually.
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In zone 5, your best overwintering is in the ground. If you don't absolutely have to overwinter in pots, don't. In zone 9, the ground doesn't get cold enough for hosta to get an adequate winter chill/sleep if overwintered in the ground, and so overwintering in pots above the ground gives them a bit more winter cold than they otherwise would. (If I'm not mistaken, it's about 2 zone differences in temperature for plants left in pots vs in ground, meaning that potted hosta in zone 9 should feel like they're in no more than zone 7 for the winter.) I think it's safe to say that Spring outdoors starts sooner in zone 9 than it does in zone 5, and therefore zone 9 hostas might not get long enough of a winter rest if they are watered as soon as the zone 9 Spring rains start. Similarly, in zone 9 you may want to protect your hostas from too much water outdoors during the winter too, either by covering them with a tarp or keeping them in a shed, otherwise these hosta would stay awake or keep waking up throughout the winter (if simply left in the pots in their usual outdoor spots, that is). On the contrary, pots left outdoors during the winter in zone 5 can be left in their normal spots because they will be frozen for the winter. Trouble arises when the temps drop throughout the winter and thaw the top of the pot but not the whole pot, which is when the crown ends up "soaking" in water since the water cannot flow all the way through and out of the pot, and this is why people suggest laying the pots on their side. Anyhow, just wanted to remind everyone that some of the advice given here is very much zone-dependent, so it might be helpful to keep in mind the poster's location at all times. Hosta can handle awfully low temps during winter, but not warm, especially if they have access to water during that time too.
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
i am sorry .. i couldnt read everything you typed... big weather headache today ...

the key... NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE ....

GET THEM DORMANT.. KEEP THEM DORMANT .... as long as possible ...

no black pots in the sun thawing.. or coming out of dormancy in some freak high temps.. 3 months early ... meaning.. mulch or cover them with something to keep them cold on warmish winter days ...

cover that.. and you are all set ...

also ... the problem with smallish pots.. is their tendency to dry out completely ... you dont want them wet... but you dont want them bone dry ... gotta figure that part out also ...

ken
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Janice
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
I just put to bed about 20 pots, for the winter. They are still leafed out, most of them
and I have chosen a bed I've put all my extra composted cow manure in to 'plant' them in
their pots.

They are snuggled in and in December (zone 5/6) I will dump bags of mulched leaves on them.

The way things are going around here, I might be able to do that even sooner.
I wait for a good holding freeze to do that!!!

I am a little concerned for my smaller pots--the ones I received from some on-line sources.
I have them planted as the big ones, and slightly tilted!
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diggindutchman
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Hi Jakki, Follow the advice above from 3 Pros of the Hosta Forum. The young tc's you get from Clayton, myself and others when potted or planted and protected from hard freeze will do fine the next year in your new garden. Anything that doesn't make it from me let me know for replacements in the spring. Hope you feel better with your plans for your new garden.
John
PS Hey J, I have 1200 3" pots to put to bed for the winter, want to help??!!! Free Cookies!!!!!
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jel48
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
I don't know about Janice, but I'd take you up on that if I were closer John!

I had some delays getting mine in the ground, but they went in yesterday. I'm covering them a couple of nights because of temps in the low 30's then hope to have a week or two to let them get settled in before a killing frost. Hopefully those roots will keep doing their thing. I'm not too worried about them as there is a LOT of snowfall here in the winter. Several feet of snow mulch ought to do the trick :-)
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Janice
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Oh dear, John! As much as I'd LOVE to come help you 'tuck' yours in, too--these days,
my girlish figure couldn't endure the assault of the amount of cookie-rewards it would take,
to induce me 'make the trip'!! LOL

Actually--'girlish' is not quite the most accurate description of me these days,
try 'WOMANLY'---or, maybe 'matronly' even better?? Gak--I know 'where's the beef'!!!

But, hey--- thanks for the offer, anyway! LOL
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jakkig
Original Author
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
John - how did you know it was me? Guess you put 2 and 2 together from my rambling emails to you on eBay!!! But, I didn't know you knew/guessed about my affair with Clayton's little lovelies too!

Thanks for all the help everyone - I am going to read all your advice, and the advice on a couple of the other threads about over-wintering hosta.

When I've come up with a plan, I'll get back to you, more succinctly, and ask you if what I have come up with is appropriate for the minis and tc's I've got. I know this isn't a question everyone will agree on - but I hope someone who has expertise with the smaller/est hostas will weigh in.

Again - thanks everyone, I appreciate you all managing to get through my worse than usual rambles to find my actual question! - I'm not known for brevity at the best of times!

Jakki
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esther_opal
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
What I suggested was what I did with my TC plants that were far smaller than yours.
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jakkig
Original Author
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
OK - that sounds good esther opal - I hope you didn't think I was belittling your information - if you did, I apologize.

What is your zone? Do you get a lot of snow/frost heaving in your winter?

I have lost quite a few plants, not just hosta which seem to weather the winter a little better than other, to frost heave. Sometimes almost all my hosta roots are above ground when I get to them in the spring.

This year because of my back and not getting out to the garden, the deer and rabbits have been feasting! I am hoping the green stalks will provide enough green for the plants to gather a little strength. One other thread I have read suggests that I might be lucky!

Thanks again for your help - and again I hope you didn't feel that I was just disregarding your information. There is so much knowledge out there - I sometimes get overwhelmed trying to sort out what could be the most beneficial path for me to take! Mind you, I understand that nothing is guaranteed.

Jakki
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esther_opal
16 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
I hope you didn't think I was belittling your information - if you did, I apologize."

Not to worry, I usually talk about what I've done or researched in some way. Sometimes you will get what seems conflicting advice here because more than one method will work. I don't take much personal unless it is clearly directed as personal.

"What is your zone? Do you get a lot of snow/frost heaving in your winter?"

Z5-6 and we don't have much heaving problem but that is mainly a lack of mulch cover on freshly planted plants.
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Need help overwintering pain induced hosta purchases!

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esther_opal

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Need help overwintering pain induced hosta purchases!

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