I'm excited for you. That's a lovely large bed.
What did you order?
It's too cold and too snowy right now in my neck of the woods to dig holes. Or do anything much but shovel.

30' X 150' Hey that's a pretty good area of new space you made there! I'M excited, and it's not even my property!

Echoing ninamarie's question...'What did you order'? : )

Cheers,
Don B.

It's so nice that anyone is interested in my choices! God knows my DH isn't. At least I haven't ordered so many that I have to wait til he leaves town like Mocc!
I've basically cleaned out my wish list with these orders, but I expect to start a new one during the alphabet. Don, I'm going to reread the thread about the giant hostas you wanted for the new area where you offed the bush your DW liked.
The rental property I own in New Orleans has a lot sized 25'x 35'. I may retire there one day so I'd better enjoy this extravagant space now. Here's the list.
Allegan Fog
Alligator Shoes
Aristocrat
Baby Bunting
Clear Fork River Valley
Devils Advocate
Dragon Tails
Earth Angel
Flemish Sky
Frosted Dimples
Golden Gate
Hacksaw
Iron Gate Delight
Jade Cascade
Jewel of the Nile
King Tut
Lakeside Kaleidescope
Lederhosen
Lemon Lime
Liberty
Mango Tango
On Stage
One Man's Treasure
Ripple Effect
Sagae
Salute
Silk Kimono
So Sweet
Spartacus
Sun Power
Wheee!

You have some great plants there. Many of my favorites already there. I enable so have you taken a look at Lakeside Shore Master? I am excited that you are exited about the alphabet. It is an awesome learning tool and a great chance to show off your plants. Paula

Paula, I got my LSM after you raved about it earlier this year! If I've made good selections its because of all the great info I pick up reading this forum.
And Ninamarie, I saw you have 36 acres, we've topped out at 25.
Kathy

Great thread, but it needs a picture. I'm excited to have ordered H. Almost in tc from Naylor. I think Josh has some also at ITC. This is the Hosta with the most red color into the leaf yet. Here's the pic that First Look published. It's been my wallpaper since.

Steve

Steve, Almost is nice, does the red hold up all season? $30 (21,85 euro) is that expensive for a hosta over there?
I hope it grows well for you and you get a pure red sport from it !

Kathy, that's some list, I have Sagae and Jewel of the nile which I bought this year and are wee babies, Liberty and Earth angel are on a nice long list (for me lol) for an order in the spring.
Your new bed sounds amazing be sure to post some pics when you start planting.
Denis

Denis,

Yes, $30 is about twice the price of most Hosta here in the states. But when you consider that Almost went for over $300 at the last few auctions in which it was available, it's much more affordable. Its value is not only in it beauty, but in its genetics. I'm not sure how well the red holds up, but I suspect it does. Most plants with red in them have the red intensify as the growing season progresses. Those that have their color go away, like Purple Haze, are the exceptions.

Steve

Zkathy, that's an excellent list of plants you've ordered. Some of those are among my favorites, and still more are on my 2014 list to acquire. Good work!

OK, I confess...I just paid $45 for a H. 'Justice'. It's more than double the price of any hosta I've yet purchased, but I wanted it in a big way, so I pulled the trigger and got it. Maybe I can get some cool seedlings from it someday. In any case, I'll be getting a very large streaker in spring, and I await it with great anticipation! : )

Cheers,
Don B.

Here is a link that might be useful: 'Justice' pics at Hosta Library

This post was edited by Don_in_Colorado on Fri, Dec 13, 13 at 20:47

And yes, even at $30, I must admit that 'Almost' is very tempting to me. The more I look at it, the more I want it! Sigh....

Don B.

Justice is very beautiful. You can't have them all, Don.

Steve, when it was $300 in the auctions was it TC or a division? I hope a division otherwise that would be nuts! well its a bit nuts either way lol. I do prefer this to any of the streaked ones. I don't see it for sale this side of the pond yet.
It would be nice to have, but at this stage in my collection I can wait a few years till it becomes more common and thus cheaper, in the meantime I can get the older ones you guys have had for years for little money.

Good for you zkathy, its nice to have the space ready. I have a young Earth Angel. It was beautiful even with hail damage, see picture. My sister has Devil's Advocate, it is the most beautiful colors- you will love it.

Dan et al. I love that Hosta Almost but will wait for a year or two as I need to prep some more garden space and already plan to order too many.

So long as we are talking about wishing for rare or expensive hosta, I love that Zig Zag. Its a beautiful streaker but for $55 I'd need to here more about it than what I read on the hosta library.

Beverly

Denis,

Those were divisions, and they were division of the Originator's Stock. So you would see them named like this: "H. Almost O.S." in a garden. If Almost continues in TC, then it will certainly decline in price over the next few years. Sometimes plants appear in TC for a short time and then disappear shortly afterwards, but if a plant proves popular, future TC runs will happen and the price will go down.

As for streaked plants, what's not to like? Here's a pic of a seedling I grew last summer.

Steve

Steve,
I think I get ya, so there would never be as many OS divisions as TC therefore more expensive and good to get a bit of the original plant too.

As for the streakies, I really don't know, but they don't do anything for me. Mabey its because they may look a little ill or sprayed with weedkiller . They just don't float my boat. I don't mean any offence and I realise the effort and time that goes into the breeding but give me a classy blue hosta any day.

Classy blues? We love those, too. : ) 'Prairie Sky' is classy. And very blue.

Don B.

P.S. Denis, I don't think you'll be offending anyone on this forum just by expressing your likes/dislikes/preferences about any types of hosta. And if someone IS offended by it...Well, that's just silliness, isn't it? Cheers!

This post was edited by Don_in_Colorado on Sat, Dec 14, 13 at 21:48

Yes Don, she is beautiful.

and yes of course but just trying to be nice lol!

Denis

PS. is that your own photo? its the nicest one for Prairie sky on the library!

This post was edited by mountainy_man on Sun, Dec 15, 13 at 7:26

Denis, growing streakers leads to new variegated hostas. Streakers are not stable and over the years will have divisions of them stabilizing into solid colored or variegated hostas. But nowadays, so I read, most new hostas are discovered in tissue culture or created via exposure to chemicals.
I personally have much time and try to get a large blue streaker. I am growing seedlings right now. That would be nice in addition to all those green with white border, blue with white border, center veriegated, green, yellow and blue I have. I like my large blue and puckered ones, but adding to it a large blue streaker would be nice! Bernd

Yes, thanks Denis. That's mine.

Don B.

Bernd, a big blue streaker would be really interesting, I hope you get there, looking forward to the photos.

Kathy, my hosta addiction did not begin until I moved here. Now I have over 300. I have enough land for all I want, but making new gardens is a lot of work. My world is frozen right now and covered in at least 6" of snow. So North Carolina has always sounded like lotus land to me. I would one day love to see spring open there. We share many of the wildflowers that bloom in our forest in spring, but then you have many more that I have never seen in the wild before.
I also have stayed away from streaked hostas, except for 'Allegan Fog', which I really do like a lot, and one called "Fired Up,' which was given to me as a gift. It is too new to have shown itself well, but still, its performance in 2013 was underwhelming. I do also grow 'Spilt Milk', but it reverted so quickly, I just consider it a big blue.
However, if I produced them from seed, they would be all over the gardens and I would adopt them and treat them as my own.
I can see springing for 'Almost.' It's a beauty.

I have a couple of streakers now.....in the beginning I did not care for them either. Then I discovered Stargate, and then London Fog.....Now I love them both. I guess there are others in my garden but if they streak I did not observe that trait in them. Actually Stargate did not look too impressive when it arrived, but it grew on me. I trust it will be impressive since it is the keystone of the Stargate Entry to my hosta garden....to the MoonWalk.

I felt the magic of the garden tonight just after twilight, before the full moon of the Winter Solstice silvered the strands of Spanish moss dripping from the camellia branches. Like luminous gray lace, motionless above a field of flower pots tipped on their sides in dead domino rows. Solar stakes glowed like lightning bugs of a summers eve. But this was no midsummer dream borrowed in December from the other side of the world. Cool, like frost on green leaves. evergreen jasmine covered the tall chain link fence and blocked out the rest of the unmagical non garden world. That was tonight.

I still love my hosta garden, even at its nadir, where all that remains is the promise of a breath-taking leap come spring.

Moccasin, I loved your description. I hope a picture of your hosta garden at its nadir will follow.
My world is white.

Wrote a reply 3 times now. GWeb won't let me add any pictures, it says there is some "illegal code" and they cannot tell me what it is, because it is so bad......then it throws me to the GWeb home page......

Sorry, Ninamarie. I'lll have to figure this out so I can post a picture. Later....

It won't accept anything from Flickr. Now let's see if I can upload through the GWeb uploader.

Testing

Nope. It won't accept the HTML CODE from Flickr.
I'll check it with Photobucket next.

It takes the Photobucket code. Now what has Flickr done to its HTML codes that scares GWeb so badly? Wonder if I must now change back to Photobucket?

I got the picture, though it took ages to figure that out. I'm in a high speed dead zone.
Fascinating, beautiful stuff. Thanks for posting it. The long grey strings of moss - will they green up when spring comes? Does it feel cooler in summer for their presence? Can you hear it rustle in wind? Stupid questions, I'm sure, but it is out of my experience. I did do a quick read about it on Wikipedia.
I'm glad you posted a picture of Candy Dish. It's been on my wish list forever and a day. I have Marilyn Monroe, but have always wished I'd gotten Candy Dish instead.
As I said, I'm surrounded by white. In fact, I'm about to bundle up and go and chop wood.
zcathy, tell us about your 25 acres. You must be thrilled.

Mocc - I had the same problem with Flickr. You need to make sure you are using the HTML link and not the Embed link.

They recently changed the default settings when you open the 'more ways to share' and have Embed the default now. You need to click the little bubble below the size drop down menu and choose the HTML.

If that doesn't work, then I'm not sure, but I noticed you said you weren't having your Flickr photos upload and I remember the same thing a couple of days ago.

Try it and see if it helps. :)

Ludi

Ludi, now what possesses yahoo to go messing with something that works..without asking MOI?

So thanks for the hint. Hope it works for me.

Ludi, thank you for the encouraging words which made me persevere until I discovered the problem.

The "embed" text persisted instead of html, until I returned the size back to "original" and now I'm no longer frustrated.
Let me see if I can show a couple other shots.

A guy on Flickr commented that he'd never seen my garden in such disarray.....was I feeling okay? I thought that was funny. Nothing that the arrival of spring won't cure. I really must get things orderly, but I was "nesting" the pots to keep squirrels at bay. Tonight there is dense fog, and my hair hangs as limp in the humidity (96%) as if I had endured a steam bath. Now wind is moving the chimes by the deck, which lets me see the wind. The spanish moss is pitching around too, like waves in a ragged sea. It only now dipped to a low of 69F.

Ninamarie, the gray moss will stay gray just like artimisia or wormwood or dusty miller does. However, when it rains, the softness of the gray changes to a soft green. It is an air plant, not a plant which takes nourishment from its host. Somewhere I have closeup photos of the blooms which are lip-colored and very small. Only I cannot find them right now. Drats.

Oh oh! Got into more trouble.I love H. Almost! ( Will this madness never stop?) I ordered my first $45.00 Hosta: H.Erotica, plus H.Sting . and some other shade companions. And I am getting seeds in the mail I want to try growing this Winter

Oh oh, sounds like GOOD trouble, though! Good job, Rosie. Many of us are having some of our holiday gifts delivered in spring, it seems. : )

Don B.

I love your hanging down moss Mocc. What a unique look it gives your garden. Is it there in the summer? Maybe we are all to focused on the hostas to notice it.

It's there all the time. Just the winter picture was taken late in the day, and a flash emphasized the moss.

Here it is earlier in the year with hosta pots all around.

Taking quick minute to say MOCC, WOW!

Your pictures with the moss are like being in another world...they are just fantastic and I can't stop looking at them. Another wow..

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

Jo

Loved this thread! :-)

P.S. Here's a pic of snow castle in Breckenridge, Colorado!