i think that if god had meant for you to cover plants with plastic.. your plants would be plastic .. skip the tarp ... IMHO ... go out on some 30 degree sunny afternoon.. lay down and cover yourself witht he tarp.. you will probably be surprised how warm the side of the cold soil will become ....

NEVER...EVER .. leave a black pot in the sun .... i have no idea why you are moving them out into the sun ????

never.. let a frozen pot get rained on.. or snow melt.. pots tend to turn into ice cubes ... and roots need air as much as being surrounded by ice ...

once the pots are frozen ... stack them [before they freeze to the ground] .. on their sides.. on the north side of a building [no sun] ... flat pyramid shape [or like firewood] against the structure .... and ignore them until late spring...

plastic can attract vermin... mice... voles... etc .... if that is a problem ... beware.. perhaps bait the area ...

you said you have read up on this... and now you are discounting everything you read.. and winging it ... whats that all about .... lol

your ideas MIGHT work.. or NOT .... all we can do .... is tell you how we did it ... and GOOD LUCK!!!!!

ken

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...

Thank you for the feedback. I wasn't avoiding the previous suggestions, just seeing if i could modify it to work in mass. I wonder what growers or nurseries do with all their stock thru the winter? I didnt mean the sun - just out of the cover of the porch and into "wild". They are under a maple now.

The tarp idea was as a replacement for the tipping over and avoiding drowning the frozen plants with rain. your right about the greenhouse effect of the plastic, i'll avoid this, and follow your advice.

I never really had a vermin problem, so why create an environment where it can have one. I never knew where they go for the winter, now i know..

I did think about HVX, but honesty, every picture i see about HVX, bleeding of colors , thinning and bubbling of the green areas (which look like pebbling), i really can't distinguish it all too well, especially with these new cultivairs in this lot. All my hostas are slug food by mid summer anyways. I did get sluggo this year, but it was too late to save what i had. Next year might be better. But if i do find something suspicious next spring, in the garbage it goes.

Again - Ken and Idiothe, thanks for all the advice, if your interested, and want a few, let me know. i can try shipping some to you.
But then you have to let me know how to bareroot these correctly.

What I want to know is why the Lowes in our area never have sales like this!! And why some Lowes/HD have a much broader selection of hostas than they have up here in Connecticut. I'm jealous!!
Jakki

Hi Guys!

WHile on the subject here, is it really ok to keep hostas in pots in a 7a/6b zone? I still have many hostas that I purchased this year, that have not been planted yet, and are in pots still. I thought I had to get them in before the winter or they would have a chance of dying from the cold or freeze-thaw-feeze that pots can get.

So, after reading here, if it is possible, I would LOVE to keep them in pots till the spring, when I can plant them in nicer areas. So all I have to do is stack them on their sides on a northern wall like a pile of firewood? That would be great if I could do that!

On another note, I have stopped purchasing hostas from the store chains for a while now. I had noticed several hostas at my Home Depot with HVX. Did inform the manager, told him to throw them out, but not sure if he did or not.
Anyway, ever since then, I refuse to buy them other than from reputable companies or my hosta friend here in NJ.

I did not say this to bum you out, but just to keep an eye out. As I have learned from here, the hostas can have HVX without any visable signs for 3 years I believe.

Otherwise, it looks like you got a great deal! I wish my HD put on an end of season plant sale like that!
Christy

I remember about 10 years ago, when I was just getting into doing a little retailing to support my hosta habit... I picked the brain of a relatively famous horticulturalist in our area who had a big hand in developing the AHS display garden at the Minnesota Arboretum and a very smart guy. He had a retail business and wintered over a lot of hostas in pots.

I happened to visit him in spring when he was evaluating his losses. He waited until freeze, then stacked the hostas into pot pyramids, covered in straw, put on a tarp, then weighted it down. He had massive losses... he figured he maybe didn't get the moisture right, probably had some greenhouse warming from the tarp... not having enough shade... and also had varmints move in and damage some of the plants.

So my suggestions weren't just speculation - they came from a really smart horticulturalist who never did that again... He believed the answer was to go simpler... good moisture, freeze solid, put in the shade, tip on side, maybe cover with hay/straw to prevent more moisture loss... then bring them slowly out of dormancy.

By the way, you can "cheat" a little in the spring. I bring some of the pots into a cool greenhouse and get a jump start on our notoriously long Minnesota winter. Not too early, but you could jumpstart the spring by a month or so without doing any damage...

I always put my pots in the shed. 99% make it (zone 6b/7a)

I put mine in an attached, unheated garage, before they freeze. Never water. Have not lost one in 6 years.