Wordless Wednesday -Fall

What to do with hosta at end of season part 3

Hosta 'Metallica' after being divided this fall

Fall is one of the times of the year when hostas can be divided. If you are going to divide hostas, it should be done in spring or in fall. During the summer hostas are busy growing their roots, and if you divide them they will not be happy. Who wants sad hosta? Not me! Can you tell sometimes that I teach in an elementary school? When dividing hosta in fall make sure to do it 4-6 weeks before hard frost.

How should you divide a hosta? Well if you want to be careful about it, and divide off certain eyes you can follow this link. Otherwise you can just place a shovel (I prefer a transplant shovel for the job) somewhere in the middle of the hosta and step down. You now have two hosta. Use a garden fork or a shovel to dig up the hosta you want to move. Depending on the size you can divide a hosta multiple times.

What to do with hosta at end of season part 2

Another late blooming hosta 'rupifraga'

I decided to do a series of posts about what to do with your hostas at the end of the season, since it seems to be a very popular question, especially this time of year. Many people ask me if they can bring their hosta inside during the year. Some think their foliage resembles a philodendron, so how wonderful it would be to have them in the house. Others mistake their normal fall downturn (yes, they start to brown, and leaves will die off) for them dying, and think bringing them in the house will bring them back to life. The truth is that hostas need a period of dormancy. Just think of hostas, as the bears of the plant world. Just like bears, hosta need to hibernate during the winter. Some people have done experiments bringing hostas in the house, and putting them in the freezer for a couple of weeks. I have never tried it myself, though I am tempted to do it this year. Maybe if I put one in the freezer now, and then planted it again later in the winter it would help chase away the winter blues!

What to do with hosta at end of season

Red October is a late blooming hosta

The biggest question I am asked this time of year is "What should I do with my hostas now that it's fall?" Many people think they should cut all of the foliage off of them. I've even heard of people running them over with their lawn mower. The truth is that you don't have to do anything with your hostas in fall. By cutting the foliage off of your hostas, you may actually be spreading disease. Imagine if your doctor never cleaned his instruments, well that is what it's like if you cut your hostas. If one hosta has a disease, you could be spreading it to all your other hosta. So if you want to cut down your hostas in fall (or even the scapes) it's very important to sanitize your equipment when going from plant to plant with a 10% bleach solution. There is no way I am going to bleach my tools after cutting the foliage off of my 400 some hosta, so I find it's much easier to just rake up the dead leaves from my hosta in spring.

Fall Blooming Crocus

Imagine my surprise today when I pulled into the driveway at lunch time to see a new bloom in the garden. But there it was, my fall blooming crocus, which is hard to miss because unlike it's spring cousin the fall blooming crocus has really large blooms. Colchicum autumnale is also known as the naked lady flower, because it's foliage comes up in spring (foliage resembles orchid leaves) and dies back in early summer. Which leads one to believe it died off without ever blooming. However in fall the bloom emerges without any foliage. I love that it blooms right about the time that everything else in the garden is dying away. Just when I've just about given up on my gardens, here is a reminder that things are still alive and beautiful.

School Atrium Needs Some Help

View from hallway window

View from inside atrium

View from inside atrium

View from 5th grade hallway

View from my library

Our school atrium is in need of some serious help. It's overgrown with weeds and is severely neglected. I have tried applying for a grant to help redo the area, but my effort was turned down. I've even thought about doing a little renegade gardening, coming in at night with plants from my own garden (but I think they would know who did it). Our maintenance department is planning on cutting down the big trees in the atrium, because they are growing into the foundation of the school building. I would love for this area to be a quiet reading area for students in the spring and fall. It can't really be a outdoor classroom, because there are indoor classrooms surrounding the atrium and the noise echoes loudly inside the atrium. Since the atrium would only be seen in spring and again in late summer/fall I would love it to be full of spring blooming bulbs and fall blooming plants. They would have to be easy to take care of and a little drought tolerant, since we can't always guarantee things would get watered in the summer while students and teachers are away. I, of course, would love to put hostas and hardy geraniums in the area. If we can find a way to use this area for a green project (such as teaching students to compost) there is a great chance we could receive a grant from the SCA company across the street from our school.

I know there are a ton of great garden designers and gardeners out there, especially in the Twitter world, and I would love to get your opinions of what we can do with this space. It breaks my heart to see it in such disarray, when I know it could be such a beautiful space.

Painter's Palette - Persicaria virginiana

Painter's Palette is a great plant to add a pop of color to your shade garden. It will grow in shade and in dry locations. Painter's Palette has leaves with a great marbling color to them. In fall it blooms with the tiny red flowers seen in the photos. Painter's Palette grows under my maples, which is a hard place for any plant to grow. It does spread, very slowly here in Wisconsin. I have had the plant in the picture for 4 years, and so you can see it does not spread out of control like other persicarias can.