It is growing near maple trees, AND must be at least 15 yrs old

==>>> how have you been looking under it???

dig it up

the maple is killing it

ken

I haven't been looking "under" it, but I have dug all around it and haven't run into any tree roots at all. The garden is somewhat raised, kind of a berm (?)

It is between a giant Sagae and a huge Elegans. They are not shrinking. It is kind of close to the Sagae, but they have been cozy for years.

Thanks for the input Ken. Maybe I will just have to find a new home for it. Just wish I knew what it doesn't like about where it currently lives.

oh come on jamie.. denile is not a river out your back door... i will yell

THE MAPLE IS KILLING IT ...

dig it up.. wash off all the soil.. and prove me wrong... take pix ...

i will bet my shiny penny.. that you will get a gob of fine hairy maple roots out of it.. who posted a pic like that a month or two back ...

back at the old house.. i dug up a plant as such.. planted 5 feet from a maple... potted it in good potting media.. and left the pot right there.. and took care of it..

by fall... I COULD NOT MOVE THE POT.. BECAUSE THE FREAKIN MAPLE GREW ROOTS UP INTO THE POT ...

its the maple... why are you so adamant.. it has to be something else???

your plant would have more vigor.. if you dug it out.. and left it on the driveway.. rather than under a maple tree.. pure and simple ...

ken

I always thought my sugar maple would not have roots into my hosta, but it had. So I moved three hostas into those spinout bags. They seem to be doing better now.
As a minimum, push a sharp spade around each plant all the way down. Maples also do vertical roots from further down into hosta roots, that is you have to push the plant out of the soil to be sure there are no roots.

I have plants also which shrink, but that seems because of something in the soil, like a fungus. I will treat them once I get around to them.
You should fertilize hostas and water them regularly.
Any day from now we could see the effect of leaf nematodes in hosta leaves.
Bernd

Berndny, began seeing the signs of nems this week here in Mobile. I thought it was over with, but sadly not. For now, I am cutting off the affected leaves.

It hit my Royal Flush, which is now isolated. Thank heaven for pots! Just pick em up and move em out of the way. Looking fine here on June 24....but has the tell-tale brown between-veins signs of the nems.

Thank you all. I do appreciate your help.

Bernd, I have dug down all the way around it, and haven't run into any roots. I will do as you suggest, and actually lift it up to see whats below it. I will have to wait a bit to do it. We are having some rare 90+ weather here in MN. Not a good time to mess with plants.

I do keep them well watered tho, and the hosta around the Black Hills are all going great guns. When it cools off a bit I will pop it out of the ground and have a look.

Thanks again.

Maybe a combo of things... the maples have grown so much in the last 15 years that now they put out too much shade for BH. The Sagae and Elegans have adapted, but your BH simply may need more light.

Locally, with all the rain this year, it seems that the leaves on our trees are more dense than last year. The woods seems darker than usual...

Just a thought,
Deb

Hold that thought! I believe in your zig zag thinking, which sounds like the plant is thinking out loud about moving. It's getting prepared to shrink back in size to deal with present circumstances ... during "hard times" as it were. We do the same when thinking to move, get rid of anything extraneous. Thus the plant looks unhappy? It's a big problem, this moving, when you are not exactly mobile ... unless you produce a lot of seed to propagate yourself in a little better location, plan for the future, baby, this hosta is gonna rise again......in a better location location location. Isn't that what this world is all about? :)

Hosta are very astute game players.

My entire bed of hosta under my walnut have shrunk. Used to be my monsters and now they are mere shadows of their former selves.

Dug them ALL up today....25 or so...NONE of them had roots growing into them. Gorgeous soil like compost......but their roots were just the smaller hairy kind...no big roots. ???? SO WEIRD. I wonder what the heck happened to them all????

What are the roots like on yours, jaimie? Big fat ones or a ball of little ones?

I had several hostas visibly shrink this year, no rhyme or reason. Hostas next to the shrunken ones are fine, no root problems, no voles, no visible reasons. I'm laying it on the drought we had for the last 2 years. Some of them could take the heat, others could not, perhaps. I'm not digging them up and moving them, just fertiliziing this year and waiting to see what happens next year with "normal" rain and temperatures. No months of triple digits this year. These plants all look healthy, just smaller than they were two years ago. Just gonna be patient and see......I can always dig them up next year.
I have noticed that the ones that lost the most in size were the ones that went into early dormancy last summer.
Sandy

This post was edited by mosswitch on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 22:26

It's odd that it's really only this bed that it happened in. Makes me wonder if, despite what people say, juglone DOES have a long term affect on hosta. hmmmmmmmmm

ademink- it is more likely the walnut is sucking nutrients out of the soil than for the juglone to be the culprit.

tj