I was having a good laugh with one of my gardening friends the other day at the expense of her beloved hostas. We were both chuckling at the (entirely made up) speculation that hostas were initially called hostiles, but they couldn’t figure out how to run that marketing campaign, so they swapped around a few letters.*
It might have been spite talking. Because as soon as her hostas started poking their heads out in spring, they were back on the menu for slugs.
Now, I’m not as bitter about these popular perennials as my friend is. In fact, I think there’s no better plant to grow in the shade that will still reward us with colorful foliage and study flowers.
A little spring maintenance goes a long way toward getting the most out of our hostas this growing season.
(*Fun fact, hostas are named after botanist Nicolaus Thomas Host.)
1. Clean up hostas in spring.
Hostas have made it to the top of my list of perennials we should absolutely prune in the fall for a few good reasons. First of all, their foliage doesn’t overwinter well. Once it gets hit with a serious deep frost, hosta leaves will turn into a sludgy mess.
Perhaps more important than the aesthetic consideration is the hygiene one. Slugs love hostas. Slugs lay eggs at the base of hostas and in their foliage. And the new generation of slug kids on the block will continue to eat our hostas year after year if we don’t proactively clean them up.
So if you haven’t cleaned up your hostas last fall – and even if you did – spring is the best time to do another thorough cleanup.
Clear away rotting and dead foliage. It should come off easily now if you pull at it. Then pull back the dry leaves and inspect them closely for slug eggs. They look like translucent little beads. Also, look for and remove any baby slugs that you find.
And while you’re at it, set up some slug traps around your hostas. Because it’s not like slugs don’t travel through the garden. Clean-up is not once and done, but if we start strong and don’t let the slugs multiply early in the season, the work of keeping them in check becomes much easier over the summer months.
In this article, my colleague Tracey shows us an excellent beer trap method. I’ve used multiple beer traps in my garden, and I can attest that they work really well. However, don’t mess with it before dinner because … yuck!
2. Feed the soil of your hostas.
Once the hostas are cleaned up and the soil around them is bare, it’s time to feed the soil.
Notice that I didn’t say “feed the hostas” but “feed the soil.” I think this more holistic approach to assessing the health and well-being of the soil is better, in the long run, for our garden and for the wildlife that lives in it.
If you’re making your own compost, add a thicker layer at the base of your hostas in spring. All those good nutrients will seep into the soil and feed your hostas from below.
The soil is lava.
Another method I’m trialing in my garden is the use of lava feed (aka lava meal or lava flour). It’s like playing “the floor is lava” except this time it’s “the soil is lava.”
Lava meal is an organic plant-based finely ground volcanic rock very rich in minerals. Over time, these trace elements make the soil more fertile. The effect on plants of this soil improver is that it makes them more resilient to extremes.
Extremes can come in all shapes and sizes nowadays, from floods to drought and record-breaking heat to frost. And let’s not forget that hostas are particularly susceptible to drought. So, improving the soil to retain more moisture is part and parcel of their spring care.
All I have to do is sprinkle the lava meal around the plants evenly and work it into the top inch of the soil. This requirement isn’t necessarily for absorption, but because lava meal is so light, you want it to bind with the soil so it doesn’t blow away. I apply about 80-100 grams per 10 square feet of garden.
Needless to say, do not spread it around on a windy day.
The benefits of lava meal in the garden are still being researched and so suppliers are limited, but you can purchase it from Greenway Biotech here on Amazon.
Similarly, when we first wrote about mycorrhizae back in 2021 there was almost nowhere to buy it, and now you’ll find it in every garden center in the country. Who knows if this happens with lava meal too.
3. Mulch your hostas.
Once we’ve cleaned up and fed the soil, it’s time to cover it up again. If there’s one lesson that I would like our readers to get from my articles, it is this: covered soil is healthy soil.
Whether we cover it with living mulch (natural ground covers), compost or wood bark chips, putting a blanket over the soil is a good idea, no matter the season.
Yes, mulched hostas look very nice. But mulch is also an important contributor to that moisture retention I mentioned above. Mulching also helps protect the roots of hostas against extreme temperature variations. And it keeps the soil cool in the summer and warm in spring and fall.
In the area where I garden, we also get a lot of wind, so mulching is a good way to prevent soil erosion. This is especially important for hostas because they don’t grow very deep roots, and their crowns are flush with the soil.
4. Divide overcrowded hostas.
The first three jobs apply to all hosta plants, no matter how young or old. But this job—division—is only suitable for mature hostas that have become overcrowded.
But Mickey, I like my hostas looking large and lush! Do I really need to divide them?
I’m afraid you do, at least if you want them to keep growing large and lush. Overcrowded hostas will start getting gradually smaller. I mean, there will be more of them, but the leaves of each plant will be smaller. And the plants will not flower as well as their more airy counterparts.
Luckily dividing hostas is not hard and at the end of the day you get more hostas. The best time to do it is now, in spring, before their leaves unfurl fully and reach their mature height.
The hostas will have enough time to establish in a new spot and put out new growth this year. (If you miss this window, the second best time to divide hostas is in the fall.)
Start by digging out the entire crown.
The easiest and safest way to divide hostas is by digging out the entire clump every four to five years. Fast-growing cultivars, or plants that are super happy and thriving in your garden, might need to be divided sooner. But that’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it?
Before you dig out your hostas, give them a good soak the night before. This will ensure they’re well hydrated and that they’ll bounce back faster than parched plants.
Then using a hand-spade or a shovel, dig out the entire clump of roots. It should look like the photo above. Just shake them loose to remove some of the soil. You don’t have to completely clean the roots. Just enough to see what you’re doing.
Decide how many hosta plants you want.
Can you find the center of the clump? Or, if you’re dividing into more than two parts, can you see some natural division lines? That’s where we’ll divide. I like to call this the “slicing the cake method.”
You can divide a hosta into as many parts as you want, but the larger divisions have a better chance of bouncing back because they store more energy.
Then using secateurs or a hori-hori knife, cut through the root system. If you can’t decide what’s the best part to cut off, try to pull apart the root structure and see where it divides naturally. That’s how many plants you’ll end up with.
You can soak the divisions for half an hour to reinvigorate them, or replant them in a new spot and soak the soil around them a couple of times. Yes, they will look a bit sad for a few days, but if you continue to water them, they will eventually perk up and resume growing.
5. Snack on your hostas.
This has got to be my favorite piece of plant trivia: hosta shoots are edible. You can harvest them in early spring, while they’re still tender and tightly curled, by cutting them right at soil level.
Spread out your harvesting over several crowns (what luck that you divided the plants already), and you won’t notice the gaps. And anyway, the shoots will grow back in the same year.
What do hosta shoots taste like? My colleague Tracey says they remind her of a combo between asparagus and butternut lettuce.
You can eat them raw or add them to stir fry or sautéed dishes. You can also blanch them or steam them (not my favorite methods of cooking vegetables, but some people prefer or have to eat veggies this way.)
And just in case you want your eyes opened to a myriad of other ornamental plants that we can eat, have a look at this guide I wrote on unexpected edimentals that we should all be growing.
6. Relocate your hostas if necessary.
I left this job last because it’s not something we must do in spring, but it’s something we could do in spring if our hostas aren’t thriving.
Obviously, every gardening environment is different, and there could be other reasons for hostas not growing well. But I found that the most common way to prevent hostas from reaching their full potential is growing them in a spot that doesn’t get or doesn’t hold enough moisture.
Hostas are thirsty customers. They love growing in soil that’s rich in organic matter and holds plenty of moisture. Yes, hostas will grow in drier soil, but they will have fewer (and often smaller) leaves. This, in turn, will influence the flowers.
There are two ways we can solve this problem.
We either change the soil or change the location of the hosta.
Changing the soil is not hard, but it’s a process that takes time, usually years, to do right. We have to keep incorporating compost and organic materials into the soil in order to improve water retention while not turning it into a waterlogged mess (also not good for plant roots).
The second solution is the more straightforward one: we relocate our hostas to a spot that stays a bit damper during the height of summer.
We’ll have to dig out the entire crown and root structure, just as we would if we were dividing them. Then, we’ll replant it in a spot with plenty of moisture and part to full shade (depending on the hosta cultivar we’re growing).
While we’re at it, we can also take a “slice” of hosta and try it as a container plant. This is not suitable for large cultivars, of course. But it might be a good solution for most hostas because we can easily keep containers properly watered and move them around to see where our hostas do best.
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