The Salty Knitter

Hosta are incredibly durable plants, especially the older varieties. I’ve seen hosta survive after sitting in a clump of dirt without a pot for weeks. So it’s the easiest thing in the world to divide hosta and transplant them.

Should you divide your hosta?

Before we get into how to divide hosta, the question is should you. Most hosta take about 5 years to reach their mature size. Often gardeners will get a bit hosta mad and start dividing their hosta every time there’s more than two or three eyes. When you do that, you’re really cheating yourself of the full show your hosta has to offer.

If your hosta isn’t crowding out or being crowded out by other plants, best to just leave it alone. If it just isn’t spreading as fast as you would like, try this. Lift the root ball out of the ground, divide it into two or three clumps. Replant all in the same area with a bit of a gap between them, maybe half the expected mature spread of the variety you are spreading. The hosta will continue to do it’s thing, but now you’ll have 3 individual crowns grouped together and they’ll look much more substantial.

Why are you dividing your Hosta?

If your hosta truly needs to be divided, my next question is what are you doing with the divisions? Are you dividing and spreading through your own yard or are you giving away the divisions.

If your hosta has a name, it most likely has a patent. Growers and nurseries that sell hosta all pay royalties to the breeder. That’s how breeders get compensated for the time and effort they’ve put into developing that plant. Breeders might cull thousands of less satisfactory plants before they produce one good enough to trial. They might then trial that variety for years before they consider sending it for tissue culturing.

At the end of the day, it’s your garden and your plants, but personally I don’t divide my hosta to give away ‘free’ plants. My mother has hundreds of varieties, and beyond sharing some of the more common varieties among ourselves, she doesn’t give away ‘free’ hosta either. Even if I had enough to bother selling them, I wouldn’t. Bottom line it’s stealing from the breeder to do so.

When to Divide Hosta

Spring really is the best time to divide hosta. Hosta will survive division later in the season just fine, but dividing in the spring has the least impact on appearance. A hosta divided just as the pips emerge will leaf out in it’s usual rounded mound. A hosta divided after the leaves emerge will have either a flat side or a hole where the division was taken.

Often, the leaves that were out when the hosta was divided will remain limp. With water and care, new leaves will grow over the season but it’s going to look ugly for a while. The hosta will come back next spring as gorgeous as ever, but it’s not going to look pretty until then.

How to Divide Hosta

There are a couple of ways to divide hosta, but this is my preferred method. Lift the clump and brush away as much soil as possible. The rinse away all of the remaining soil. With the soil gone, it’s easier to tease apart the roots. I try to have a minimum of 3 eyes per division. Generally if hosta are sold ‘bare root’ they are sold in 2-3 eye divisions so I figure that must be a good number.

Here’s a closer look at one division where you can clearly see there are 3 eyes or shoots.

The other method is to dig up the root ball and then using a sharp shovel or a hori hori knife, cut through the clump to divide into as many divisions as you decide on.

A hori hori knife is an amazing tool to have for this purpose. It’s the gardener’s equivalent of a multi-tool. You can use it as a narrow shovel, and it has measurements marked on the blade so you know how deep your hole is. One side of the blade is serrated, the other has a knife edge. It’s perfect for dividing root balls. If you decide to get one invest in a good one and make sure it’s made in Japan before buying.

Transplanting Divided Hosta

These hosta happened to be going to a new bed. I prepped it the same as usual, layers of newspaper underneath to block weeds and a thick layer of compost on top. The bed is deep enough to allow the hosta room to grow.

Please don’t do those skinny skimpy beds around your tree! They should be at a minimum 18-24 inches from the trunk to the edge and more for larger plants. Anything less than that you should just mulch and skip the plants. Your plant should be far enough from the trunk that it has room to grow.

When planting hosta, the root is always the center. It grows all the way around, so if you have the root crammed up against a tree trunk or a fence it’s not going to grow right and it won’t look very good.

Here is the same hosta today. I divided and transplanted these on June 9th, so if I’m doing the math right, this is 17 days later. You can see not all the leaves are standing up.

But that’s fine because when you look closer you can see the new growth coming up from the center of the plant.

So that’s it! See how easy it is to divide hosta?

I have an odd little house in an odd little yard with other peoples yards on all 4 sides. One side is alley way and the person on the other side put up a hedge for privacy, hers not mine, but it helps me out too. The front yard and one of the sides are wood privacy fence.

Then we have the back yard with a rusted, broken down chain link fence. That has maple trees growing through it. Massive maple trees that would cost a fortune to have removed. So we live with the broken down fence.

Most of the time we’ve lived here there was an older woman who lived back there and spent little time in her yard. We could kind of forget there was no privacy back there.

Now we have new neighbors, younger ones who spend time in their yard. Nice neighbors, friendly neighbors, but it’s an adjustment to see people walking around back there. Worse, their property sits a couple of feet higher than mine. So no matter how nice they are, it feels uncomfortable.

Plus the fence is ugly and grass won’t grow back there, but the weeds surely do.

So this is where we started. 53 feet of fence-line that all looked as scruffy as this. Everything got scalped to the ground with the weed wacker. Then I spread newspapers over the scalped weeds and covered it all with 4 cubic yards of compost.

No Landscape Fabric?

I’ve never actually used commercial weed barrier, but I’ve heard so many people talk about how much of a headache they create down the road I would never consider it. Commercial weed barriers will start to drift up through the mulch, they are impossible to plant through if you want to make changes, and eventually weeds will grow on top of the weed barrier.

So I’m in the camp that does not recommend them. Better options are newspaper or cardboard.

A few layers of newspaper are easily punched through with a trowel if you need to change a planting. I’ve also heard of people using cardboard. I haven’t tried that yet but I would imagine for a planting of shrubbery it would work well. Both of those options will kill off the weeds and eventually disappear into the soil.

A Fresh Start

Even with nothing planted it was a huge improvement!

Next up, a hedge. After a bit of time spent on the internet, I went with Yew. Yew are the most drought tolerant option for shade. Things can get pretty dry under the maple trees! Small yews, because I find it easier to get a small evergreen to transplant successfully than it is a large evergreen. Also, small yews are cheaper than big yews and I needed more than one.

I wish I had taken a photo when it was just the yews planted. We’re taught to avoid straight lines in our plantings except when planting a hedge. Then you plant a hedge and find out there is something surprisingly satisfying about looking down a soldierly line of shrubs marching along in a straight line.

The yews are spaced a bit far apart for hedging, I am hoping to propagate a few more to fill the gaps.

Adding the Plants

Now that my backdrop of yews was in place it was time to start planting. Karen Chapman of Le Jardinet says…

Learning to select plant combinations rather than just individual plants, will immediately transform your garden from the onesy-twosey look to a cohesive design.

As I was planting, I tried to keep that advice in mind. I also used Excel. I have a list of all my Hosta on Excel that includes their height and spread. New divisions or new hosta don’t always show their true proportions for a few years so it’s helpful to have an idea of what they’ll become in time.

Starting at the left…

Starting in this corner is a Prairie Fire Dogwood. I have one in another location and somewhere along the line one of it’s branches touched the soil and ta-da there were two. The blue hosta in the back corner is a Hillbilly Blues. I don’t know what the smaller blue one to the front is.

These three Hosta are clockwise from the top – Guacamole, Prairies Edge, and Spartacus with a pale blue Iris to the right.

Here I’ve got a day lily (red I think) with an empty spot left for a white peony. I will probably put a planter there for now unless I manage to grab some peonies at an end of season sale.

Hosta Cathedral Windows at the top with two Sun Power at the bottom.

Here, I’ve got my Shade Planter in Red as a place holder for the Rose Glow Barberry I plan to put there.  Nice that the planter is near the color of the shrub for planning purposes. The hosta in front has red stems. I’ll come back and put the name in once I have it.

Moving to the right…

Abiqua Drinking Gourd in the back with two Strip Tease to the front. This is where the Excel spreadsheet comes in handy. Abiqua Drinking Gourd is new this year, once it’s mature it will be taller. All three will be 24″ tall.  Next to them on the right is a white iris.

Here in the group to the left clockwise from the top – a blue sport of something or something that is fabulous. It stays blue longer into the season than any of the other blue ones I have, then a possible Golden Meadows and last – June (one of my favorites).  To the right Diamond Lake, a random blue and Brunnera Jack Frost in front. The empty space between is for another Day Lily and a White Peony.

Moving & Dividing Hosta in June!

Most recommend dividing Hosta early in the spring. Dividing in spring just as the pips are emerging gives the least disruption to appearance. That said, Hosta are pretty durable. If you can live with a not so nice plant for a year they will generally pull through being divided or transplanted well into the season. Some of them won’t even look like anything happened.

Wishlist

I still have some plans for this bed.

• White peony – I think there is enough dappled sunlight to make a go of  2 or 3.
• Another Day Lily or two – they add a nice vertical element even when they aren’t in bloom.
• Hellebore – Dark green leaves and early white flowers, who wouldn’t want that?
• A Red Glow Barberry – in a small yard, shrubbery has to be carefully considered. I’ve wanted one of these for a long time so that will happen.
• A yellow Barberry – for the far end near the shed to add some bright.