The Plants We Ship The most frequent question we get 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.  Our 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.  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.  Most of our plants are grown in 4½" containers, smaller plants 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.   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.   So we grow our plants in 4½" pots.  Obviously you have to sacrifice size when you order plants by mail, right?       You know we wouldn't put these pictures up 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. 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.   Tissue Culture Tissue culture (TC) plants are propagated in test tubes using very tiny pieces of the growing tip of the plants.  This is usually done by labs that produce thousands, or even millions of plants each year.  The picture shows the size of the plants when we receive them.  It might be hard to tell their size without the Pepsi can, but each plant is grown in a 1" cell. We usually grow tc plants for a year before we ship them.  Occasionally, fast growing varieties received in early spring may be ready for shipment in the fall, but usually plants received this spring will be grown through the year, over-wintered outdoors, and shipped next spring. They are approximately the same size as plants propagated by division. Again, some would be larger, some smaller, some may have one eye, some may have more, depending on variety. 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. The plant on the left is what is normally referred to as a single-eye division, the one on the right has two eyes.