Gardener should properly take care of hosta plants in other to make hosta grow more prominent and allow for continued growth. Hostas are the perfect low-maintenance perennials to fill out your summer garden. They thrive in outdoor, shaded areas and can range in size from 2 inches (5.1 cm) to 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, with leaves that cover from smooth to wrinkled, blue to rosy, and matte to shiny.
The following are the hostas care for fast and better growth.
- Water your hostas repeatedly. Hostas will turn brown and wilt, if their soil gets too dry, so make sure to water them regularly to keep the soil moist. Water hostas under the foliage at their bases to protect the leaves from getting burned by the sun.
Watering hostas every morning will aid keep them hydrated during hotter parts of the day during the summer.
You can scatter mulch around the bases of the hostas to help keep the soil moist. - Cut hostas back after the first frost. Hostas don’t stay green all winter, so after the first frost of fall, you’ll probably want to cut them back – otherwise, they’ll look dried out and dead all winter long. Use pruning shears or scissors to cut them back to a couple of inches. They’ll come back out in the spring.
You can also cut hostas flowers. Whether you reduce your hostas when they’re flowering or once the bloom has faded is up to you! - Compost the soil in the spring. At the beginning of the growing season, assist bring the hostas back by adding compost to the soil. Add a layer of mulch to help retain moisture. Water, the area, thoroughly to promote the new growth emerges.
- Split your hostas after 3 or 4 years. Hostas are quite durable, and it’s easy to divide them to share with friends or plant in other areas of your garden. To split a hosta, lift it out of the ground and separate a few stems and their roots from the central part of the plant. This is correctly done in early spring when the leaves are still curled, but you can do it at any point during the summer if your plants are healthy.
This will help maintain the overall quality of your Hostas and will make doubling your Hosta population easier. - Protect your hostas from the disease. Maintaining the correct watering, mulch, and conditions are the key to keeping disease away from your hostas. These are some measures you can take to prevent and combat rot:
Use fungicide spray if you see large spots with a dark border on your hostas, as this could be a sign of Anthracnose. Fight Anthracnose by preventing your hosta plants from getting too wet.
If you see whistled and brown leaves along with white masses on the plant, pull away from the hostas, as this could be a sign of Sclerotium Blight.
Water responsibly and prevent your hosta plants from getting too wet to combat Crown Rot.
How to control slugs in hostas
There are a few ways to stop slugs eating hostas. You can surround them with a ring of crushed eggshells, which are too sharp for the slugs to crawl over. One way to prevent slugs from eating hostas in your garden is to place a board on the ground near the plant. Go out with a flashlight at night, or wait until early morning, and lift the board up and place the slugs in a can of soapy water. If you are vindictive, at this point, you can sprinkle a little salt on the slugs to kill them quickly. Be aware that salt can cause a toxic element in the soil, so this is not recommended.
Another way to keep slugs and snail away is to place an unbroken line of broken egg shells, Stalite, diatomaceous earth (follow directions), lava rock, or sawdust around the plants you are trying to protect. These materials lacerate soft-bodied pests and cause them to dehydrate.
If you have a raised bed, it’s effortless to get rid of slugs and snails from hostas, merely tacking copper foil to the sides of supported raised beds. You can also stick copper strips vertically in the soil. It seems copper gives the little critters an electrical shock. Gee, that’s too bad, isn’t it?
What to Do About Slug Bites on Hostas. Video
How to prevent deer from eating my hostas
Avoiding deer from your garden prevents them from eating your hostas, but it can be a costly project if you construct fencing to keep them out. Because deer are adept jumpers, vertical fences must be at least 8 feet high. Slanted barriers, which can be only 5 feet tall, confuse a deer’s field of vision, but they must face outward at a 60-degree angle. As an alternative, you can cover your hostas with mesh or floating row covers, but this is a daily task that requires uncovering them during the day, and comprising the plants at night. The edges of the fabric or mesh must be secured, so the wind does not remove it.
The following are the best way to keep deer away from eating hostas.
- Deer Scram – all natural granular repellent to keep deer away from hostas and other plants including shrubs and trees.
- Wireless Deer Fence – a sweet smelling deer training device that will train the deer through negative reinforcement. The practical method proved to keep deer away from hostas.
- Plantskydd – an odor-based repellent that stops deer and other pests before they taste the plant.
- Liquid Fence – a liquid revolting that you spray directly on your plants (be careful not to apply in direct sunlight as this could burn the plant). The smell of the spray will deter deer and other garden pests from destroying your garden.
- Put up a fence – this may be the most effective way to keep deer away from your hostas, but it is also the most expensive method. The fence should be 8′ to 10′ high.
- Get a dog – having a dog can be an effective way to scare away deer.
- Human hair – spread human hair around your garden to keep deer away from your hostas and other plants.
- Don’t feed the deer – feeding them will encourage them to keep coming back.
These are just smatter tips that can assist you to stop deer from eating hostas plants in your garden and home. There are several deer repellents out there; it’s a matter of figuring out which method works best for you.
How to keep voles from eating hostas roots.
Gardeners who grow hostas know voles prefer those plants. Sinking the rootballs of hostas into plastic pots that you place in the ground is one way to curtail their activity. If you take that route, put a fine-mesh wire over the drainage holes, so drainage is still good, but you’ve removed any entrance hole for the vole.
Voles will not bother Lenten rose or daffodil bulbs, but they adore tulips. There are two types of vole, which the meadow vole, or meadow mouse, lives in grassy habitats and makes its nest mostly above ground. And there is also the pine mouse, sometimes called the pine vole, which lives almost exclusively underground. He burrows and uses existing mole tunnels to get to where he wants to go, but it’s the 10/12-inches holes he creates in the soil that confirms his presence. These holes, which also feature some pushed-up soil, are often seen nearby the root systems they eat.
Both voles are the mouse size. They are tiny and brown, rounded ears and short, hairy tails. They are prolific breeders, so you can be overrun with the rodents unless you take steps to eliminate them.
There are some excellent gardening habits you can follow to help prevent vole damage. Mulch piled around trees and shrubs invites rodents to nest there and chew on any nearby bark and stems, so keep mulch pulled back about 2 to 3 inches away from plants. Also, keep your lawn mowed, remove garden litter and keep vacant lots, ditches and other open areas free of weeds and tall grass. These all give voles places to nest.
Also, clean up any spilled bird feed, which can be another meal source for voles. If your vole problem is severe, take extra steps to guard against doomed and losing valuable, costly plants.
You can create protective rings of small, sharp stone around plants. Trench down about 6 Hinches, fill the channel with 5 inches of small sand and refill it with 1 inch of soil. The gravel irritates their skin and keeps them from feeding. Many gardeners are using this method to stop voles eating hosta roots. To minimize the damage voles do to tulips, plant the bulbs on the broad side, say 8 inches. Voles are less likely to go that deep for food sources; also, your bulbs are more likely to return the next year because they like the coldness of the more in-depth soil. You also can protect bulbs with a ring of gravel around each bulb, or work a wheelbarrow of gravel into the entire planting bed; this method also works for perennial gardens.
Your best bet is to stop voles from eating hostas root with old-fashioned mousetraps that you set where you see these holes. Bait the traps with peanut butter or small slices of apple with part of the skin still attached. Work the bait on the bottom of the trap trigger, so the vole has to work at getting what he wants. Otherwise, he may thieve the bait and scoot before the trigger springs.
Place the trap next to the hole, and place something like a one-gallon plastic pot over the trap. Voles like to feed in the privacy of darkness. Put a brick or a good-sized rock on top of the container to prevent other wildlife or children from messing with the trap. Check the traps daily and bury any dead ones you find; bait and reset the traps as necessary. You can also use apple slices to check for voles in early spring and fall. Place apple slices in any underground trails you may see and review the slices 24 hours later. If you see tooth marks, you’ve got voles again and needed to begin the trapping process. Many people have been used this method to catch multiples of voles.
