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The Bridgewood Gardens Hosta Book
First, we all
know that this isn't really a book. It's a collection of facts,
factoids, opinions, stories and other foolishness. I'm trying to cover
everything I can think of that I have learned about hostas. My goal is
to cover every aspect of hosta culture. Unfortunately, there are some areas
that I really don't know much about, and in those cases I just make
stuff up. Ok, so maybe it is a real book.
There are many
advantages to publishing your own book on the web. First, it doesn't
have to be very good. It's my web site and if you don't like my book, you
can buy a real one. Sometimes you get what you pay for. On the
other hand, if you do find the information you were looking for, I hope
you'll appreciate the fact that you didn't have to shell out 30 or 40 bucks
on a real book, so you can spend the money you saved on some of our hostas.
I didn't spend two whole days writing a book for the fun of it.
Actually, it
seems to be taking a bit longer than I expected. I am a grower, not a
writer, and doing something even as elementary as this is a slow, painful
process. This is and will probably always remain a work in progress. I
originally intended to finish the whole thing before I put it on the web.
That seemed like a reasonable plan until I realized that I will be dead by
then. So I finished a few topics and will add others as I have time.
Not everything
here is stuff I made up. Some of it I copied from other books and from
various issues of The Hosta Journal a publication of the American
Hosta Society. Naturally, I changed some words around so I wouldn't be
plagiarizing.
This May Be
All You Need to Know
We've been
growing perennials commercially for 25 years and during that time we've
tried just about every plant we could find that we thought had some garden
value. We've tried literally thousands of species and cultivars, I
can't think of any that are less trouble to grow in the garden than hostas.
If you are just including a few hostas in your garden, a bit of common sense
care is all you need to grow them. Grow them in bright, open shade,
keep them watered, fertilize occasionally, and enjoy. You don't have
to agonize about them or do anything special. You really don't have to
read all this stuff to grow hostas.
If, on the other
hand, you have become one of Us, if you actually keep a count of the number
of hostas you own, or if you go through the spring catalogs using a
different mark for "got it", "want it" and "need it", then you may need more
information.
There are
obviously some serious gaps to fill, but here's what I've got so far.
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