I don't think this is the most important time of the year for hosta. I think the growing months and the amount of water they get is more important.

And I think someone had to comment to move this thread on down. :-)

Why do you always pick on poor pitiful little defenseless me.

I can't argue with the water question but water will not overcome poor soil conditions in fact don't get me started on water.

I plan to get a truckload of the county's recycled yard waste and put it down, finally, on top of several layers
of newspapers and cardboard---hopefully this week! I've put it off because the trailer we've had has been in use
by someone else for a long time. Hopefully--this week we'll have it to use again! :o)

When you get mulch/compost whatever they call it at your recycling center it may be too hot to put down immediately. It will usually come from a large compost windrow and may be to hot. Check temperature before you apply compost, if it is just spread it out a bit and water. It is fine as soon as it cools. I spent a day checking J's source, which is good, and almost all yardwaste compost is fine mainly because they are required to test for many things to produce a proper product and this testing is monitored by state agencies.

If it is real I mean real black it may have gone anaerobic and can be a problem, I assure you the facility will not want to sell it because it can be recycled by the facility easily. If you have it on your driveway and don't want to load it back up just spread it out enough to get air and it will return to aerobic in a few days. Exposed to air anaerobic bacteria dies, goes dormant or changes to aerobic, then it is fine.

I'm going to steal some information from Chris W with my comments about planting that relates to mulch and post it here.

Chris W says;

How deep should you plant a hosta? What are the consequences of too shallow? Too deep? What is the "right" depth for a hosta?

Plants that are too shallow get heat stress faster, drought stress faster, and can get cold damage over the winter if that crown gets exposed. Deeper plants tend to stay dormant longer which can be important with frost sensitive plants like the fragrant ones. If you have hostas coming back smaller with smaller leaves, check if you can see the crown. If so it is too shallow.

Plants that are too deep will need to grow up closer to the surface. Eyes may emerge further out from where the main clump was located so that you no longer have a tight clump. Stems may rot a little easier if they get buried in summer by mulch.

I always try to get the "right" depth, but I would much rather err on the side of planting a little too deep. Plants will establish the "correct" depth the very next season if they were too deep. For example if you plant a crown at 3" and it wanted to be 2" you will probably never even notice that it had to grow up that extra inch below the surface before producing a new eye. However, plants can take several seasons to grow deeper if they come back at all when planted too shallow.

In our rows we will often find that the largest hostas are the ones that were planted a little deeper than the rest. TOO deeply and we will see that the eyes are spaced a little further apart but are still usually the largest plantlets. When we have a plant that is struggling we find that the crown is often right at or slightly below the surface. We also find that moles often tunnel underneath plants causing them to rise up closer to the surface, plus creating an air pocket under the plant. Those plants dry out in the summer and struggle over the winter.

The only time that depth may pose a problem is if they were buried or sank during the season. If a hosta was growing at a depth of 1" from the top of the eyes/dormant buds to the surface and was then planted at a depth of 3" you might get some stem rot. By early to mid summer most stems are hardened off to the soil and can tolerate a little covering but you might get rot problems during the heat of the summer. Because of this we prefer to topdress shallow hostas in the fall after they are starting to go dormant. In most cases it is just better to get the depth close when planting and the hosta will find its way the next spring if you were off a little.

Two examples of plants finding the right depth after being planted too deep:

1) A Hosta 'Riptide', one eye, was planted last summer with the crown at a depth of 3 1/2". This particular eye emerged last, but by mid summer the eye was slightly larger than other plants around it. I dug it up and it had grown an elongated stem out of the main eye and then established a new crown at a depth of 2", measured from the top of the dormant buds to the soil level. Roots were at about 2 1/4". Our remaining plants were only at a depth of about 1" but should have been planted up to 2" deep without causing any harm.

2) A Hosta 'Pineapple Juice' was noticed in the growing area with 6 eyes spaced very far apart. It was planted last fall. Upon digging it I noticed that it had been planted too deeply, and possibly at an angle. The deepest eye from last fall was at a depth of 4 1/2". The shallowest was at a depth of 1 1/2". All of the eyes produced elongated stems and every single one produced a new eye at a depth of 1 1/4" with roots around 1 1/2". So in this case the proper depth would have been about 1 1/4".

Butch adds;

Nothing I'm about to say disagrees with Chris but there is a method to make it easier.

Choose the depth you feel is proper then mulch when you've finished planting, the plant can find its own depth with out much suffering. Mulch will not overcome way to deep but help and mulch will absolutely overcome to shallow. Mulch is creating new soil, building it up slowly and the plant will find its own proper level.

Two things mulch offers is insulation, summer and winter and air. Air is a little discussed subject and just as important as water, sun and food. Ive found that hosta roots do not need as much air as most believe but the crown area does need sufficient air.

The air around the crown is consistent with hosta growing in the wild in Japan.

Thanks for pointing me back to this discussion. I read it before too. :)

I always mulch for winter. We have loads of leaves, so it's not a problem.

The point was the planting depth part of that post. In fact if the plants are in fact planted to deep then mulching may not help although I don't think mulch will hurt anything.