Hosts in the garden (landscape tricks)

What plants to plant hosta with

Harmonious plantings are built on the contrast of foliage. Selecting the participants in the compositions, it is necessary that the living conditions coincide. I will name the shade-tolerant plants with which the hosta is well adjacent:

• marsh iris;
• daylilies;
• buzulnik;
• garden fern;
• lungwort;
• undergrowth;
• geychera;
• forget-me-not;
• astilba;
• kobei, etc.

One-sided flower garden with hosts and daylilies

Unwanted pairs with crops that have an aggressive root system, ground cover and light-requiring:

• badan;
• Turkish carnation;
• lavender;
• phlox;
• liana-like;
• primroses;
• periwinkle;

Consider the size of the plants in the combinations. The host grows quickly, plant small perennials remotely.

To summarize ...

• Hosta is a plant, the species and varieties of which are so many that it is not even possible to list them within one article. You can find a bush with light green, dark green leaves - monochromatic or decorated with a contrasting border. In most cases, the hosta blooms with white "lilies", but there are varieties with lilac-pink flowers.
• Thanks to the varietal splendor, several host varieties can be planted in one yard, creating a beautiful landscape picture. Ferns, conifers of any growth will become good companions for them.
• In care, this bush is unpretentious, due to which it is called a plant for the lazy.
• For the winter, the hosta does not require shelter - lush leaves protect it from frost.

And this video contains many photos of garden plots, in the center of which is a well-groomed varietal hosta. See for inspiration:

How to choose healthy planting material

In garden centers, there is a chance to purchase greenhouse varieties with little decoration. They are brought from Europe and in the process of delivery, their root system often dries up. Such seedlings are very painful and take a long time to acclimatize. By their appearance, they begin to approach the image on the package after 2-3 years of living in the garden and with very careful care.

Local flower lovers will have healthy and well-growing seedlings

It is important that they are grown in the same conditions, which means that it will be much easier to take root in a new place.

Baby phlox should have 4-5 healthy green shoots up to 10 cm long. The roots should not be dry, without spots and rot. The root system should be shortened to 15 cm.

Delenka

A phlox shrub sold in the fall should have 2-3 stalks, thick and green. Healthy roots up to 15 cm long, in which renewal buds are already laid.

Phlox planting material is a bunch of roots with sprouted buds. Their shoots should be green and thick. The roots should not be dry, damaged, or showing signs of rot. Their length should not exceed 15 cm.

Care

1. Weed the plant periodically. Remove old and dried leaves.
2. Loosen gently and shallowly, since the roots of the hosta are close to the surface.
3. Remove the flower stalks, then the bush will be neat and will not fall apart in different directions.
4. In the fall, before frost, cut the bush at the root. Cover the plant with compost.

1. Top dressing

1. Feed the plant 3 times per season: in spring, during flowering and in autumn. Top dressing should be carried out after watering.
2. They are fed with mullein diluted 1:10 with water, superphosphate and saltpeter.
3. In the spring - urea and humus mulch.
4. It is better to alternate organic and mineral fertilizers.
5. Apply fertilizers in granules with care so that the leaves do not get burned.

2. Watering

In dry weather, water by sprinkling.
Spill the soil up to 15 cm deep. Water in the morning or evening. Water the bushes on sandy soil daily.

3. Diseases and pests

1. The main "enemy" of the hosts is a slug.
   Mulching the soil will help get rid of it. Needle mulch or sharp small pebbles work well. Water only in the morning.
2. Yellow spots on the leaves indicate the appearance of a nematode
   ... If you put finely chopped leaves in water for 10-30 minutes, they will be visible in the water. Remove the infected plant from the site.
3. From waterlogging, the hostu is affected by a fungal disease.
   The diseased plant will have to be removed. For prevention, it is recommended to disinfect the instrument, since the disease is transmitted within the site. It is difficult to detect the disease, but blue varieties and curly-headed hosta are most susceptible to it.

Hosts are great in rock gardens, at ponds and in group plantings. Subject to all the features of care and planting rules, this plant will delight you with its lush bush in summer cottages and in gardens, both as a border along the paths and in single plantings. And some miniature species can be grown as a houseplant.

Hosta care

How to care for a host in the garden.

If the hosta grows in fertile soil, then it may not be fed for three to four years. The main top dressing for the host is humus and compost, which are applied in the fall in the form of mulch. It is undesirable to get carried away with mineral fertilizers, but if you decide that they are needed, sprinkle granular fertilizers around the host after rain or abundant watering. Plants are fed with liquid fertilizers (root and foliar) once every two weeks until mid-July, and then they stop, otherwise the host will continue to grow new leaves and will not have time to prepare for winter

The soil around the plants should be moist all the time, especially around young hosts, so it is very important to water the plants on time, and watering should be done in the early morning and at the root, and not along the leaves, which deteriorate from getting water on them. In addition, the stream of water should not be strong so that the soil does not compact, but, on the contrary, can be saturated with water as deeply as possible.

The darkening of the tips of the leaves of the hosta serves as a signal that the plants do not have enough water.

First of all, pruning shears must be sharpened and disinfected with alcohol to prevent any transmission of disease. For a sharp cut and good branch healing, the cutting blade of the shears should be on the side of the remaining tree, while the counter blade should crush the branch to be cut.

Autumn rose size

The size in autumn serves to suppress the inflorescences, which, if set on seeds, only weaken the plant. Then you need to cut the branches at the level of the second leaf. Also cut off the central branches. This size is used to aerate the plant for good air and light circulation. After that, your rose bush will be better, and future flowers will be even more beautiful.

If you are interested in making the hosta bush look neat, you will have to break out the young flower stalks, otherwise the host will "fall apart" after flowering. The host needs to loosen and weed only at first, when it grows, the weeds will no longer be afraid of it. After three to four years, the host needs to split up as it will grow a lot. Dig up the hosta and separate the young cuttings from the main root. This will not harm a healthy plant.

Hosts are unpretentious plants, but Americans claim that the more host varieties in your collection, the higher the risk of getting an infected specimen. Sometimes hosts, weak or frostbitten by spring frosts, are affected by phyllosticosis, a fungal disease that manifests itself in the form of yellow-brown merging spots on the leaves. Sometimes the peduncles are affected by the fungus Phyllosticta aspidistrae Oud. Infected plants are removed and burned, and the soil in this place is disinfected.

Hosta suffers from gray rot (Botrys cinerea) and from sclerotinia (Sclerotinia). Rot affects the leaves of the hosta, fighting it with fungicides, which are based on folpet. Sclerotinia is a fungus, white cotton mold, detrimental to the root neck of the hosta. It is eliminated with dichlorane.

The main plant pest is slugs. A sign that the hosta has attracted these garden pests is large holes in the leaves. Fighting them is simple: place bowls of beer around the host, and a day later go and collect the slugs that have slipped down to drink beer.

In addition to slugs, stem nematodes are not indifferent to the host. Signs of their vital activity look like necrotic yellow spots spreading between leaf veins. A simple test will help to detect the appearance of nematodes: put finely chopped hosta leaves in a thin-walled glass, fill them with water for half an hour, and then look at the contents in the light. If there are nematodes, you will see the worms swimming in the water. It is impossible to fight nematodes, because chemicals will not destroy the eggs they have laid, and they will give new nematodes the next year. Plants will have to be exterminated within a radius of two meters from the affected specimen.

The danger for the hosta is represented by caterpillars, which, having appeared unexpectedly, can destroy the entire plant in just one night, as well as beetles and grasshoppers, after the invasion of which the leaves look like Swiss cheese. Only insecticides can save the hosta from insects.

How to grow a hosta from sunflower seeds at home?

There are several ways to propagate a host. The most popular option is grafting. The second easiest way to grow hostas in the garden is by sowing the plant with seeds.

The seeds for sowing are harvested when the fruits are fully ripe. They are in a dense capsule that forms after flowering.

Whether the hosta will grow from the seed depends on the preparation of the seed. Experienced gardeners recommend soaking the seeds in a growth promoter. For example, in “Kornevin”, “Epin” or aloe juice as a natural alternative.

The second nuance that should be taken into account when growing and caring for hosts is disinfected soil from fungi and other aggressive microorganisms. You can solve this problem using a substrate that is sold in any gardening store.

If you sow hostu in pots, then they can be pre-treated with medical alcohol. After that, you can add a special substrate. The seeds are laid out on the surface, after which they moisten the soil well and sprinkle them with a layer of earth 5-7 mm.

Then the sprinkled place needs to be compacted a little. After these manipulations, the landing is considered complete. Before emergence, the pot must be covered with glass or plastic wrap.

After the first plants have emerged, they must be carefully protected from direct sunlight and regularly watered generously. In this case, there must be a lot of light for the seedling to grow.

Before planting in open ground, I recommend hardening the plant. For example, put it on the street, if before that it was in the house or on the balcony. When the plant is still small, it may require extra care.

Hosta boarding rules

The hosts are planted in large landing pits. But the key parameter is not their depth, but width - plants develop mainly horizontally. And the preparation of wide pits, which make it possible to quickly grow bushes and provide a large area of ​​nutrition, is more important than working out the soil in depth.

The hosta planting dates coincide with the usual planting dates for herbaceous perennials. Transplanting is considered optimal in the spring, in the third decade of April or the first decade of May, after the soil warms up and the roots of the plant wake up (the root system will begin to grow, but the first leaves will not start to grow and the first leaves will not unfold), or at the very beginning of autumn - in the third decade of August or the first two decades of September.

The latter option still leaves enough time for high-quality rooting of new plants. Hosts that buy with a closed root system, container plants can be planted all summer. In emergencies, from April to mid-September, ordinary cuttings are also planted, but only with regular, high-quality and attentive care.

For Siebold hosts and all its varieties and the rarer Tokudama hosts, planting options are limited only in early autumn, because the plants do not start growing before the leaves unfold and may not take root with early separation.

When planting hosts, it is advisable to observe the following minimum distances between plants and to neighboring crops:

• 20 cm for small-leaved host;
• 30 cm for medium varieties;
• 35-40 cm for large-leaved plants.

There is nothing complicated during the landing of the host:

• For plants, wide planting pits are prepared, the diameter of which is 2-3 times the diameter of the intended bushes.
• The soil is watered abundantly enough 30-60 minutes before planting.
• Delenki are set in pits on mounds of soil, trying to maintain the same depth as the mother plant, guided by a clearly visible residual trace from the soil. If it is difficult to determine the planting level, the buds are left on the soil line, only slightly covered with soil.
• Carefully fill the gaps between the roots with soil, filling the planting holes.
• Planting is completed with repeated, but light watering.

For 2–3 weeks or until signs of active growth and engraftment appear, the hosts provide daily watering that maintains stable soil moisture. Organic mulching allows you to stabilize the conditions, but it is better to do it not immediately after planting, but after the hosts begin to actively grow. Usually hosts mulch in autumn, and even for plants planted in spring, this option is considered optimal.

Hosta species and varieties

Hosta flower in all its variety of species and varieties is widely used in landscape design. Hosta hybrid has more than 4000 varieties today. But there are not so many main types, on the basis of which this diversity arose. Host species that served as the basis for breeding:

• (height 60 cm, leaves are wide, dark green with a white border, for example, Dream Weaver).
• (up to 90 cm tall, leaves are large, glossy, dark green, for example, Tom Schmid variety).
• (height up to half a meter, green leaves with a cream border, for example, hosta albopicta).
• (up to 60 cm tall, leaves with distinct veins, for example, the Elegans variety).
• (up to 75 cm, leaves with a wavy edge, the middle is white with a green border with strokes, for example, host Undulata Mediovariegata).
• (up to half a meter, leaves with pointed tips, for example, the Thomas Hogg variety).
• (up to half a meter, the leaves are bright green, glossy, for example, the Royal Standard variety).

In fact, mistletoe was not a sacred bush because it was rare, but because the oak itself was sacred. Our ancestors discovered that of all the trees in the forest, he was the one who symbolized Better light and the power of the sun. The moment was not chosen randomly: this is the blackest and most disturbing time of the year, the days never stop shortening, the nights are more and more endless and painful, the sun, Every day a little colder, less and less rises into the sky. If spring never comes back?

In such cases, to boost morale, one has to go and see the mistletoe grow. It grows in the sky among the branches and never steps down. And then the Guy berries, the only white berries in our countries, don't they look like small moons in scaled-down models?

Numerous host varieties are also classified: a) by color; b) in size. According to the color of the leaves, the hosts are divided into five groups:

Today, pagan traditions have not completely disappeared. In Northern Europe and France, it is customary to hug under a mistletoe branch, a symbol of prosperity and long life during Christmas and New Years. Mistletoe played a large role in ancient and Germanic mythology. Today, his drugs show signs of hypertension, hypotension, and arteriosclerosis. In Germany and Switzerland, its extracts are prescribed in addition to certain anti-tumor methods, mainly to stimulate the immune defense.

They are present in all aerial parts, mainly in leaves and, to a lesser extent, in berries.This means that the toxin control centers have several symptoms after ingestion of the berries and that their toxicity is considered to be low. The toxicity also manifested itself depending on the subspecies of mistletoe, but also with the host! The authors are warmly grateful to Louis Girard for his extensive contributions to the illustrations of this article, and to Jean-Pierre Moussa for the bird illustrations.

• – blue host
  (hosta blue - B) - the color of the leaves is bluish-gray;
• – hosta yellow
  (Go) - combines all yellow-leaved hosts;
• – hosta green
  (Gr) - all shades of green;
• – host variegat
  (V) - variegated host varieties, as well as varieties with a light border along the edge;
• – host media choice
  (MV) - light leaves with a green border around the edge.

By size, hosts are divided into 6 groups:

Why Grow Green Fertilizers?

Regis Thomas and David Busti, December. Phacelia, Spring Vetch, Mustard: Three green spring fertilizers that find their place in your garden. Let's take a look in this article on the many benefits of green manure and why you should sow. The goal is to occupy the land prior to growing summer plants, which will be planted from mid-May. This is called a reserve culture.

Therefore, it is important to have a plan for your vegetable garden of the year on paper, or at least remember which areas you are going to plant.

• – dwarf
  - plants below 10 cm, Draft (D): Blue Mouse Ears (bluish leaves really look like mouse ears),
• – miniature
  - from 10 to 15 cm, Miniature (Mini): La Donna (bluish-yellow-green leaves),
• – small
  - from 16 to 25 cm, Small (S): Hosta Goldtone (green leaves with a white or yellow stripe), Headsmen Blue (blue-green leaves);
• – average
  - 30 to 50 cm, Medium (M, Med): Night Before Christmas (dark green leaves with a white center), So Sweet (green leaves with a creamy white border), White Feather (a unique white hosta that over time gradually turns green);
• – big
  - from 55 to 70 cm, Large (L): Alvatine Taylor (bluish-green leaves with a greenish-yellow border), Golden Meadows (rounded wrinkled leaves with a golden center, wide green border and pale green strokes);
• – giant
  - above 70 cm, Giant (G): Blue Vision (bluish-green leaves), Sum of All (the middle of the leaf is green, along the edge - a wide golden border).