With apologies to George Schmid, Mark Zillis, Diana Grenfell and
Mike Shadrack, and all others who actually wrote real hosta
books. This is my version.
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.
Of course, 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.
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 nearly 30 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 have so far.
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