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Our most frequent asked question is "How big are the plants you ship?" It's a reasonable question,
but very difficult to answer. We grow hundreds of varieties, and it's
hard to say much that applies to all of them.
Most of our plants are grown in
4½" containers, miniature and small varieties may be in 3½" pots, large varieties may be
grown in gallons and shipped with most of the soil removed. But some
hostas grow faster than others, some are extremely rare and some are very
common, we have very few of some and more than we know what to do with of
others, so we simply cannot specify a size that applies to all.
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Our Standard Plants
Our
standard plants usually
average 2-3 eyes. New or uncommon varieties that are still in short supply
and plants with large or very large leaves, which generally multiply more
slowly than smaller varieties, are often shipped as single eye plants.
Obviously, we want you to order again, so we ship the largest plants we can.
Most of
these plants are grown in 4½" pots, but small varieties
are grown in 3" pots.
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HalfPints
Our HalfPint hostas are simply smaller than our standard
plants. Most are single-eye plants grown in 3" pots or equivalent.
We can offer these plants at greatly reduced prices
because we don't have to grow them nearly as long. If
you are willing to do part of the growing, you can save
quite a bit. That means you can buy more hostas!
These plants have established root systems and are
not hard to grow. If you follow the advice we provide in
The Hosta Book, you shouldn't have any trouble.
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If you don't know what a one- or
two-eye division is, or what tissue culture plants look like, we'll get to
that.
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You'd probably rather have those
gallon size hostas that you get in your local garden center, right?
Well, that's difficult for a mail order nursery because the plants are just
too heavy to ship economically. |
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So
we grow our plants in 4½" pots. Obviously you have to sacrifice size
when you order plants by mail, right? |
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You know we wouldn't put these pictures on our site if this wasn't the same plant in a different size pot.
Obviously, the point is that you shouldn't judge plants by pot size. The
difference is often the amount of dirt, not the plant size. Sometimes
plants purchased at the local garden center are larger than our mail order
plants, sometimes they're smaller.
And no, you don't get a can of
Diet Pepsi with each plant.
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These pictures were taken in
June. The plant is a two eye division of 'Mildred Seaver'. We do not
grow our plants in heated greenhouses, so in the early spring, March and
April here, they will be smaller, just like they are in your garden.
 And
finally, we have the difference between a one- and two-eye division.
Some people call them shoots, stalks, spears, or whatever, but
traditionally, the growing point of a hosta has been referred to as an eye.
The number of eyes that a division has normally increases each year over the
winter, and the more eyes a plant has, generally, the larger it will be.
Small hostas typically multiply faster than large ones. It is not
unusual for a plant of 'Golden Tiara' to go from one to five eyes in
one year, while large hostas like 'Blue Angel' and 'Sum and Substance' may
only go from one to two eyes, or may not multiply at all the first year.
The large hostas have to spend some time establishing a good root system to
support the plant before they can grow all those huge leaves.
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