I made my bed on a bank in my back yard. The bank had gotten very overgrown with scrubby trees and english ivy. By the time I was done I was thoroughly sick of english ivy! I've never seen such huge roots in my life.

It is under dogwoods and an NOID tree and the soil was pretty good from fallen leaf litter that had decomposed. I added aged cow manure and peat moss as I planted and plan to add more peat this fall/winter.

I'm impatient. I just planted this year and know that it's going to take time for them to mature but I just can't wait until they're mature and the bed is filled in :)

I will get some pictures this afternoon of the damage and post them.

I'm a relatively new hosta enthusiast and have found it to be a learning experience.

It sounds like the browning is probably sunburn. I've found that although some hosta are listed as sun tolerant it really depends on your area of the country. In my area sun tolerant means something different than sun tolerant in say zone 5. There are very few plants (especially shade plants like hosta) that will be able to tolerate a lot of the southern sun and humidity.

I've also battled slugs this year and for some reason the slugs have generally disappeared. I don't know if it's the Sluggo I've applied or if it has just become too hot for them. I have found that there are a lot of remedies you can use to discourage slugs. My best advice is to do a lot of reading on the subject and try different things and see which works best for your particular situation. Also, as the plants mature, especially some of the bigger plants you mentioned, that size and maturity will cure a lot of ills seen in smaller less mature plants.

Wish you well and hope your hosta thrive, Good Luck !

So you know i feel your pain, this has just been a bad year for my hosta. My ADG looks like the holy grail of pollen. No hosta in my yard was spared from late frost, wind damage, beaten down by heavy rains, dogs chasing bunnies, random bites from bugs and critters, and a few were stepped on in construction. They have had plenty of water, at least they have that going for them!

Some years are just tougher on them than others, due to the uncontrollable elements. And the newer additions can be more fickle, as mentioned.

Here are some pictures - I think the Stained Glass may have a dire problem. Someone got it for me as a bareroot plant - probably from Walmart. It was just planted this spring but it's pitiful.

All the rest were planted this spring too but not as bare root plant. Before I saw some of the pictures posted here of hostas that you guys ordered I didn't realize bare root plants could look so good!

Lemon Lime

Halycon

Abiqua Drinking Gourd

Here are the rest of them


Blue Mammoth

Sum and Substance

Not sure -marker said Krossa Regal, pot itself said Elegans

It's easy making my garden look good......I just use other GW posters garden pics and post them as mine. It works like a charm but don't tell anybody here I do that :)

That's not Stained Glass, looks something out of Striptease to me. Your hostas look fine to me, just give them some time. When I first started out I bought a few mature clumps of common varieties from a local gardener to make the beds look more mature until my little guys grew up.

Welcome to the disease called hostas!

Thank you! I'm addicted badly already. I bought another Japanese Painted Fern and the Sun Power hosta last night.

I'm going to have to ban myself from garden centers. lol

Next year I'm going to treat myself and order from some of the nurseries I've seen talked about here. I'll spend the winter dreaming of my shopping list. ;)

PS - Well, at least what I thought was Stained Glass is variegated - that's what I wanted. It will be interesting to see it grown up. It's planted right between the two trees.

Get some slug/snail bait today! It all looks like bug damage to me.

-Babka

Looks like some falling tree branch damage, too. The rain has been bypassing us here, too. Are you western NC in the mountains? Here in the piedmont I have to water at least every other day if it doesn't rain. Welcome to the hosta addiction and to our rollicking little party here. We care about how you do with your hostas.

Kathy

Many of us live in milder climates where it makes thing much easier. I used to live down south and remember crunchy plants of all kinds. Plus like others have said it just takes time. I often thought I had mature plants only to find the following spring that they just got bigger. I still experience that some. In colder climates hostas get bigger than they down down south due to the heat and less winter chilling. Looks like your off to a good start. Keep us posted.

Trial and error, Stephanie! That is a big part of gardening. Welcome to the forum. Stick around and learn with us : )

We're supposed to learn here? Drats, I knew I was doing something wrong! I'm proof that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Seriously Stephanie, you can learn a lot here.....not so much from me though :)

Lol - you guys are funny. :) I've been going through the old posts and looking at all the pretty hostas. There are some beauties posted!

Hi to a fellow NC'er, Kathy . Yes, I'm in the mountains and I thought it was pretty darn hot so I feel for you and anyone further south. Well, anyone wherever they may be in this heat! I think they're still getting hammered in the Northwest.

I watered them when the soil got dry but the heat burned some of them, I think. Oh well,I always said things have to be tough to live at my house so this is one way to weed out the weak.

I stopped by the store tonight and got some more sluggo and then I sprayed the ground around each hosta and heuchera with the rest of the ammonia and water mixture and put out more sluggo.

I'm sure they will look much better next spring. :)

Sluggo? That's for amateurs, find some Deadline if you can. You'll use much less and it works soooooo much better. It's difficult to obtain as you're supposed to have a pesticide license to buy it but many times your local garden center or grower from a farmers market will get it for you. It's what growers and professionals use.

Ah, thanks - I've never heard of that but I'll look for some tomorrow.

Sluggo works for me. This year I have had to use very little of it. We g3t snails the size of quarters all year eround here.

-Babka (the amateur) ;-)

I would never use anything I thought was a real hazard to wildlife or to neighbor's pets. Sluggo works fine for me. If I knock down the snails and slugs in early spring I don't have to reapply often at all, and I have overhead sprinklers. Sluggo is supposed to be less harmful than other things. I hope that's right. So far so good for me.

I've never heard of Deadline, but the blurb I found when I googled says, "DEADLINE M-Ps excel at attracting and destroying slugs and snails. LONG LASTING ... This pesticide may be fatal to children and dogs, or other pets if eaten." Me, personally, I would not mess with anything that called for needing a pesticide license to use it.

I'm no expert, but some of your hostas could be planted too deep or the mulch is up awfully high around them. That last little leaf looks like it's struggling. Sun Power and Lemon Lime might like the mulch pulled back a bit, too.

I like what you've done so far, and you're going to have a lovely hosta garden when they grow up a bit. I bet you'll be getting some very nice pics of your hostas to share before too long.

Thank you :)

II think I probably had enough mulch to begin with but when it got so hot I added more, trying to retain moisture and I went overboard. I pulled it back off all the hostas and dug up the poor little leaf and planted him in a pot.

I don't know if he'll make it or not but it's worth a shot.

I looked up the Deadline last night and though I'm sure it works, I can't use it. Too many neighborhood cats wander through my back yard for that much toxicity. I'll stick with the ammonia water and Sluggo. ;)

Thanks!

My gardens are open to the public, When I start a new hosta garden, generally I
dissuade visitors from touring it because I know that there will be little to
see. The weeds will be bigger than the
hostas and the hostas will not yet have taken on their true colours, form or
substance. The second year, although
each hosta looks bigger and better, the entire garden looks knobbly and
ill-sorted and lacklustre. By the third
year, the garden is beginning to look like what I had hoped to achieve.

So, during the first two years, I do not
invite visitors to tour the new gardens and do everything to distract their
attention to the more mature gardens elsewhere. A first year gardens is just an
ugly duckling. Time will turn it into a swan.

My hostas have not taken nearly the beating yours have but I have had a lot of damage this year that I hadn't had in the last couple of years. We had a lot of rain and that seems to have brought out every bug in existence. Most of my damage was as they were first emerging and a few weeks after that. I lost a lot of the new leaves as they came out. The critters finally went away but not until the damage was done to several of my hostas. The good thing about a bad year is that you can prepare a strategy for the next year. Good luck and welcome!

Actually, I have had a lot of rain this year also, and the most amount of insect damage ever. Mostly cut worms. And a lot of dead branches puncturing holes in leaves. So expect changes from year to year. NO DEER THIS YEAR!!!! Mac, I thought I recognized my hosta in several of your photos (I wish). You wild and "modest" man. LOL

shhhhhhhhhh Donna, you're blowing my cover! Wild and modest......my wife would so laugh at that...lol.

Sandy, I get your point regarding Deadline, but it's not really that toxic. One just needs to take care with storing it as it as a child or pet would have to consume quite a bit of it to be fatal. Not unlike drain cleaner.....keep it out of reach. It's much more compressed than Sluggo and has a water resistant coating, allowing it to last in rain for weeks......not months or years. I've turned over 20 gardeners onto it and they swear by it and won't ever go back. I've never seen any adverse signs to wildlife....although I wish it would with rabbits and chipmunks :) A large percentage of our nursery and agricultural industry uses it, so I hope it doesn't have a negative impact on the environment. I'm completely organic in my garden except using Deadline, but it's so effective I only need two light applications a year ( except this year with all the rain). Sluggo is safer and I understand people preferring to use it, but I hate slug damage on my hostas and nothing comes close to Deadlines effectiveness......and I'm too forgetful to apply slug bait more than a couple of times a year!

mac - I just Googled Deadline, and I see that some places carry a liquid. It sounds like you're talking about a dry formula - is that right? I have heavy, wet soil and back up to a pond. I have an unbelievable number of snails (slugs too!) and my hostas show it.