Harryshoe, some beauties in your garden!
You picked great nurseries to order from, not a bad plant in the bunch. Mail ordering has its own issues, and paying to ship the potting mix is not economical.

I really love to look at the root system on my new plants. I always choose a container size based on the root system, and not entirely on the upper growth itself.

Show off the rest of your garden too. Hosta do not live alone, they must have companions. I spy a really nice shaded bed behind the one you featured here. Any hosta in there? :)

Yes, there is another shady garden in the back of that picture. Anchored by my giant Bressingham Blue and a mature Captain Kirk, this was my original hosta bed.

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I still believe there are advantages to purchasing larger, potted hosta. However, I am now convinced that there is no reason to fear the mail order, bare root option especially if you are seeking something a bit different. These direct-planted babies were completely integrated into the bed by year two. Satisfaction and Singing In The Rain are good examples:

That's very impressive growth for second-year plants. All your hostas look super happy.

I've never bought bare root plants but I think the advantage is that if you buy bare root the roots are well-developed. On occasion I've bought potted hostas and the soil concealed that the root structure wasn't as fully developed as I would have liked it to be. So, if you plant directly into the ground, your hostas struggle.

Very good growth,Harry! I ordered Dino this year from Naylor Creek,and even though it was only one large eye,it had a tremendous root system. I still like to buy plants in pots,so I can see the leaves,though. Phil

Wish I could buy hosta in pots, because that means I'd get to go look at them in person. As it is, the only garden centers with hosta available are Lowes and Home Depot, and those are a mixed bag of mislabeled and virused plants at worst, and at best a pig in a poke unless you dump them out and look at the roots before you buy them. Which isn't a bad idea to do that anyway.

I'm a devout follower of the mail order catalogs of Naylor Creek, Hallsons, Green Mountain, Hostahosta (Bob Solberg), Wade Gatton, Avalon Acres, Savorys, Made In The Shade, Mason Hollow, and Hornbaker. I enjoy chatting with the folks on the phone.

There are several extensive threads on this forum (from 2012 and before) about experiences with online ordering. Most online hosta orders are shipped bareroot. And are shipped via USPS Priority mail. I try to avoid ordering for delivery around a holiday, for obvious reasons.

Harry, I totally understand. I was afraid to order bare root hosta, but I joined this forum and read so many great things about Hallson Gardens I decided to place an order from them. You know the rest, I guess. : )

Don B.

I've purchased several bare root hosta from Bob Solberg and they are also thriving in their second year with the exception of OM which he gladly replaced this year. The advantage is your receive bonus plants and Ginsu Knife was a great one! Your hosta are simply beautiful.

Anyone know of a great mail order place in Canada?

Harry, I hate to rain on your parade, but not all mail order hosta nurseries are created equal. You apparently picked the good ones.

bk

So true, BKay, but Hallson Gardens and Naylor Creek are two of the best. Wise choices, Mr. Shoe.

Don B.

Paula,

Can't link to the Watch Dog. They list Hosta Fever, Budd Gardens and Shades of Green as the top 3, but I would try Goldenbrook also. I looked at their site and like the selection. Almost all of the listed sites are in Ontario.

Steve

Harryshoe, is that picture above with the yard/meter stick a Satisfaction? If so, I had no idea it could get to be that big. I'm in deep trouble here, with two of them. Hmmm, they do look good planted in the ground. One of them might be a candidate for my new in-ground bed. Not much room, but I wanted 3 large or giants out there. (I want to knock the socks off the neighborhood folks who never saw a hosta before.) Plus a bit of other plants to fill in the gaps until the hosta get to leaping.

That is the most awesome Satisfaction I EVER saw.

I read here that nurseries (not the mail order) in our towns also receive bare-root hostas, pot them up early, let them grow a few months in their greenhouses and then sell them as potted hostas for a higher price. The owner of a small local nursery explained to me that this is the way he does it.

Paula , I live in BC and order in the fall from Hosta Geek( Fundies Beauties in NS and they are bare root and come all nicely packed in damp moss , Your shipping would be way cheaper then to BC but it is a set price no matter how many you get . I like the fall to get themand most I have ordered are classed as a mature division and come up in spring looking like they have been planted for years. A bit more money but well worth the extra as the roots are huge and lots of eyes. Even the standard sizes are larger then locals. On line site lists many but maybe not the ones I see from the USA but I am just a starter so enjoy the older ones that everyone else has had for years and still are popular .

Paula,
In addition to the Canadian mail order places listed above, I recommend Riverbend Gardens.
Vanessa

Steve, thanks for the suggestions. Goldenbrook is about half an hour drive and I have bought lots there but in person. Hosta Fever is a little bit further but I was there last year. She lives in a subdivision! The width of her lot is about 50' wide but it went back quite a way.

AlmostHooked, I like the sound of Hosta Geek - large with lots of eyes, you say??

In the picture above "Singing In The Rain" is in the foreground and "Satisfaction" (free bonus) is behind it. Both second year form Hallsons. The picture is a little deceiving. They are about the same size.

My local garden center carries nice hosta from the grower below. They also include these nice ID tags.

Very nice tags, Harry. A spike for the soil or a hole for a clip ring on a metal spike. A lot more legible than my hand printed tags.

I should repeat that these hosta were planted in early fall 2011. I am convinced that this gives them a big advantage. They had five months to develop roots prior to year one growth. It just doesn't get cold enough here to slow them down.

Harry, I agree with the fall planting. Last October I received a couple of orders late, and many of them were already dormant when they arrived. And a couple of those decided to break dormancy and grow for 2 months more before they retired for the year. This spring, which had a late start even here, those came up looking so full and mature, no problem with tender leaves being shipped while they were young. I decided to take advantage of the end of season sales again this year....but it seems my WISH LIST items are already on their way ..... or almost on order;....

I didn't mean to write an "article" - but I guess I have. If you aren't interested in how marketing of hostas happens - and how it has changed - just skip this entry. It got kind of long.

I used to get a lot of bare root in wholesale... sometimes they were independent crowns grown out in fields to 2 or 3 eye sizes. Occasionally they were divisions from larger plants.

The sources for these bare root were two... the wholesalers were growing some of them here in North America. Others they were getting from the very efficient growers in Europe, particularly in Holland. Holland is so far north that you can line hostas out like corn and grow them in full sun... fast growth, if not particularly handsome growth... perfect to dig in fall, wash to bare root, then package in 25s or 100s in plastic bags and pop into a cooler for shipment later.

I remember one year in the late 90s getting 25 Gold Standards for $.95 a crown - and what they were was very large crowns cut into pie wedges, each with about 6 eyes.

I crammed them into gallon pots and grew them a while and priced them at $5 - and got stuck with over half of them. I planted a big ring around our coffee deck and sold divisions of them for years afterwards as I cleared them out for more select plants. I still use them as a source for HVX free Gold Standards.

In the past decade or two, this older model of hosta marketing has largely faded out. Big wholesalers like Walters have continued to offer some common varieties as field-grown divisions that will be shipped bare root, but far more common are tc, or tc that are grown one season and potted into 3" or 4" pots and shipped that way.

Almost all the more sought-after hostas are coming that way. It is one of the ways they are controlling HVX... tc moved directly into sterile soil-replacement material and then moved up to larger small pots and grown for shipping. This approach moved the production from outdoor growing, with all the iffyness of farming... to an indoor laboratory/greenhouse production chain - much easy to control and preditc and monetize.

Again, many of the gallon pots with one or two eyes you are buying, though not bare root, were bought by your retailer in early spring in a small pot, repotted and grown a month or three in a gallon pot, and put out on the rack to sell to you.

I've seen a great decline in the size of plants you can expect from mail order retailers... and even many of the potted plants in greenhouses. The plants are often younger and may have never been outdoors in their lives. This is a result of the newer production method, concentrating on cloning them in tissue-culture.

If you want to do mail order from established nurseries, I'd encourage you to support the ones who take a lot of the risk upon themselves. For example, many folks here say good things about Hallsons. (Full disclosure - I consider Chris and Brian friends and did visit their nursery and home in 2009.)

I was impressed at Chris' commitment to not sell young plants. He puts them out in rows in real dirt and grows them. If they are not true to type, he roughs those out. Sometimes this means throwing away a lot of hostas.

From his listings, his first alphabetically is Abba Dabba Do at $8.50. You might find some cheaper... and you will certainly find more expensive ones... but he also adds: "Plant Size: 3rd year, uncut field grown plant shipped bare root " That is very important information. You know those plants survived two Michigan winters in the ground.

I'm not trying to market Hallsons. Many smaller nurseries do the same and some other national retailers also grow plants in the ground.

An alternative approach... Q&Z (Mark Zillis and family) is a major hosta wholesaler, and they tc many hostas. They sell a lot of tc 'liners' but they also sell something they call a "Retail Ready" hostas... plants about a year old in 4" pots that can be repotted into half gallon or gallon pots and sold the same season. Nothing wrong with a retailer using these - but the prices should reflect the youth of the plants.

I won't even get into the people marketing tc plants in retail on eBay and such. You have to know if your expertise makes it worth growing tc plants that are cheaper, but far more vulnerable. I think a lot of people are seduced by the low price - and a lot of baby hostas die each winter.

My sales each year (I don't hold sales any more, so I'm not marketing myself, either!) were a mix of divisions from my plants, plants I'd lined out a year or three before, and then some younger plants and recently potted tc for people really looking for something special. Often when I could get a few tcs of the brand new stuff the first year, I'd sell those to collectors.

So you can find field grown plants, occasionally, in local nurseries and by mailorder. More commonly, the nursery plants that are over a year old were wintered over in their pots in unheated greenhouses or outdoors or in refrigerated units. Very few folks have the time to plant them out for the winter, then dig and repot in the spring.

If I had a choice, I'd always go for a filed-grown division... in person or from a mailorder place. Minnesota winters are tough... not the ideal place to find out if a greenhouse-grown plant can adapt to an outdoor environment.

You can ask retailers how they handle their plants before ordering. Don't expect them to be very forthcoming about their wholesale sources (though you can tell a lot from the tags... each wholesaler sells different kinds of tags if the retailer wants to purchase them.) But they should be willing to tell you they grew it from tc, or bought a 1 yer old plant from some source... and how they grew it on after that.

My fingers are tired... I'll quit here...

Thank you so much for your efforts, I appreciate having the knowledge so that I can make informed decisions.