thanks for the honest opinions! I suppose I will just have to suck it up and give them time to grow! lol I will take your advice and plant them on their own. I am impressed with the price still. I think I found the very same plants for sale, at a few mail order /online catalog places, they where selling 1-2 eye roots, which these are for $8-$9 each, this was a bag of 8 for under $20.00. I have no room to grow anything more inside, so they will have to stay in the fridge for a few more weeks. Then I may pot them up and put them out in a coldframe, bringing them in if the weather turns too chilly! I don't have a lot of room for many more Hostas, I may have trouble finding room for these 8 as most of my house is surrounded in sun! perhaps I will share the love with some relatives ;-)

Oh....hahahAHAHAHAHA. Ken, I had to look at the photo again to see what chocolate cover you saw....... That is my crushed red peppers, AKA pizza peppers to some folks. It is a good squirrel deterrent. But you are right about consulting with Judy on the best way to overwinter. One that I selected she would not sell because it looked so bad from the winter cold damage. She said maybe later, if it recovered. I saw no winter damage on the ones which arrived though. I am delighted to have a real nursery specializing in hosta and some of their companions as close as 200 miles. That is do-able. Must say, I did not need any of those. I see a trend though, since Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is my third Striptease family hosta to enter my garden this year. I have Snake Eyes (YES!) and Erotica beginning to grow from small nubs. And returning so splendidly from last year is the lovely enticing Gypsy Rose, which I consider the hostess with the mostest. We'll see how the Yellow Polka Dot Bikini fits in. Then there is the Snake Eyes, which I hope grows up to look just like Babka's.....which I picked out from a lineup of her hosta on the bleachers by her deck door! Just remember: DON'T BLOCK THE EXIT....

when i moved here.. i brought 1500 potted hosta ... in promix.. heavy peat media ... rototilled to 12 inches .. and slipped the hosta out of the pot .. and stuck the media in the native sand ... over the years.. many cared not a bit.. and thrived.. then i started getting fairy rings [the middle dying in EXACTLY the size of the pot/media] .. and out right loss ... the problem is that the sand was wicking all the moisture out of the peat media .. especially come july and august ... when the sand was really hot ... so.. it is best.. to plant them in native soil ... and not leave that wad of media ... thought the better your soil.. the less it matters ... ===>>>>> by making the cone.. and really firming it up.. you can .. hopefully .. set and retain the plant at the PROPER PLANTING DEPTH .... if some of your hosta.. end up planted too deep ... THEY COME UP LATE ... and many will suffer ...in the long run ... if and when they come up .. and they are late.. then they need to be dug up.. and replanted AT THE APPROPRIATE DEPTH ... the pips.. eyes .. NEED TO BE AT SOIL LEVEL ... not one inch lower ... THERE are 3 parts to a hosta.. the roots.. and the leaves .. and between the two.. is a potato like thingee called the crown ... and the crown .. like an iris.. is at soil level ... another way to tell if they are too deep .. is that if the3y are supposed to be 12 inches tall .. and yours is say.. 8 inches.. and just look squat ... then you poke around.. and see if you can find the crown.. most times.. you will find it a couple inches too deep .... ====>>>> chris grows his in mother earth ... i dont know what his potting media is ... ====>>>> you do not need to remove 100% ... just shake off the majority of the media .... if it is severely root bound.. use the hose ... ===>>> potting media is not soil ... if you want to pot them .. use a PROPER MEDIA ... new post if you cant find old posts on that topic ... if no one above suggested what kind .. ===>>>> did i miss any other questions??? ken

Irish Luck and Kiwi Full Monty are both listed as Mediums. But as you can tell from Don Rawson's photo of Irish Luck, it is a very vigorous medium! And, Kiwi Full Monty is also a medium, and it is vigorous too. Therefore, I do not know what to tell you about locating KFM. Someone else who planted Striptease near their walkway had to relocate them because they outgrew the location, overwhelming the path. I think that thread is running around on the back pages of our forum somewhere. My plants in pots are easily adjusted to their growth and also easily hidden when they look ragged. I can move out to prominent spots the top performers. In that respect, I am lucky. But, eventually, if things do not go right, the lump under the rug where I sweep my mistakes gets to be mountain-TALL. :) Do you have ideas where it will go? Fill the bed as you intended and wait for KFM to make its move. Either it likes where you put it and grows like a demon, or it pouts and you move it. Personally, it has grown nicely for me with never a time it did not look good. I'm very pleased with all my Striptease family. Another one, as you can see in the family photo I posted above, that grows similar to KFM with that loose open look, is Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. Whether the two remain similar in form as they grow, only time will tell for me....Maybe I can cheat by checking photos of mature plants, eh....(only problem being, no mature YPDB is in the library photos).