Spiderwort closes up early here also. Have no idea why. Of course, mine is wild and it comes up where it pleases, mostly in the lawn which drives DH wild.

I know mocc, Spiderwort, especially the blue and pink ones seed pretty freely, even in our walkways. I have to keep after them or they would take over the whole yard. The yellow-leaved variety,'Sweet Kate' is infertile, I think... I've only been able to propagate it by clump division. It's flowers are a deeper shade of blue too.

Spiderwort/tradescantias close midday due to hot temperatures (my take on this...have several/many) but I did notice that the ones growing on the north side of the house stay open much longer. Each flower last a day, just like a day lily and it continuously blooms for months.... if you rip out the stalks just as blooms are almost finished, you may get re bloom late in the season.

Bees do a great job of cross pollinating. I must have four different colours from just the original two. :-)

Irawon, your gardens are a pleasure to view! So lovely and neat and tidy with many wonderful companions. Makes me feel right at home! (because of familiar plants)

I'm drooling over these gardens. What artists there are on this site!

I have 2 questions:

How do those of you who use pretty groundcovers (lamium, etc.) between hostas keep them from taking over?

Do the hosta seedlings grow up to be true to their parent?

Geesh, Josephine, how do you know that about Tradescantia, by observation, or have you read something... sounds like a reasonable explanation.

Thanks, Josephine, I guess I'm an overachiever where weed control is an issue... I always have the feeling that they will take hold and I won't be able to do anything about them. There are several in my garden now that are pretty invasive and tenacious, especially with our herbicide laws, with which I'm not in total agreement.

Luckyladyslipper,

I'm not really knowledgable on the subject but I don't think seedlings are a true replica of the mother plant, just like the mother of a human being doesn't produce a replica of herself. A human mother with the same father produces offspring that are not identical because of natural selection, wherby each offspring acquires different attributes from each parent. I'm led to believe this is the same with hostas.

This is what I have learned as a member of this site: the pod parent is the mother and the pollen parent is the father and the bees do the crosspollinating. What I find fascinating is that some mother hostas can produce offspring/ seedlings by using her own pollen ( with the help of bees). The offspring, then states that his/her parentage is "mother hosta selfed".

I'm not certain about this but it's my assumption that a seedling under a certain plant may be able to assume that the mother plant nearby is the pod/mother parent. A question that I have wanted to pose is how do you determine the father/pollen parent from an open pollinated hosta. For example, is it possible for a bee to pollinate from one end of the yard to the next or is it more likely that the pollen parent/ father is close by?

Help, I'm a real novice on this subject.

lol luckladyslipper. The old saying is you may only have one mother but who knows the father. Is this where the saying is ":who's your daddy?"

Thanks for the garden tour.

Beverly

One version is "It is a wise child who knows his own father."

But the one I like, and I hope DonB gets to use it, is
HOOSIER DADDY. I think it is a priceless pun and a perfect hosta name.

Thanks for all the awesome photos from your gardens! Your hostas are quite lovely, irawon. I have some seedlings growing as well where I've left the scapes and seed pods in place when the flowers are finished. I have a hard time pulling them out, and I leave the ones I think are pretty. There are some hostas that are known for producing more streaked seedlings (I believe Korean Snow and William Lachman are a couple that fit that description. I used to have them both, but I don't think they survived for me. I also have a species hosta that has seedlings that look just like the mother plant (kikutii). I think Ventricosa does the same. Often seedlings don't favor the plant that the seeds came from much if at all. I especially like yellow and blue seedlings!

Irawon, I've loved tradescantias for many, many years. My comments/observations are from experience with growing them in my own garden and from what I've learned from reading my books and magazines. Have always been crazy about perennials. I still have not picked up any annuals this year, likely won't. I have colour everywhere in my yard regardless. I'm just a very enthusiastic gardener - perennial gardener.

Years ago when I dreamt of owning my own nursery, I kept repeating an acronym for a name in my head...PLC...which stands for Perennial Loving Care. :-)

Mocc, Hoosier Daddy is almost back to being a Hoosier Harmony. No big surprise, but still, kind of a bummer. Sorry, Mocc. However, I'll send you a piece of gold Earth Angel as a consolation/apology gift, if you would like. It would be my pleasure. What is hosta happiness without it being shared. I'll just grow it out until fall, and send you an eye when the weather is cooler. I just took some pics of it. I'll start a new thread for it after I transfer the pics to my PC.

Don B.

Lavendargirrl,

I'm like you and have a hard time weeding out any seedlings. I was just out a while ago and there are all kinds of tiny hostas still coming up everywhere. I'm going to leave them until they develop 4 leaves and then I'll decide whether to cull them or not. It's my objective to have one streaked hosta in each of my hosta beds because what I understand is that that's the only way you're going to get variegated hosta seedlings. I only have 2 right now: Dorset Clown and Ice Age Trail.

Josephine,

I do think you missed a calling. I've been impressed with your perennial knowledge and your ability to grow hostas, even back to health as well as growing them in pots where I have failed miserably.

Moc and Don,

Good, gosh, golly I was fully expecting someone like Ken to poke all kinds of holes into my observations to Luckylady slipper about natural selection and then you (moccasin) came up with:

"It is a wise child who knows his own father." Loved it.

I'm looking forward to a thread of Hoosier Harmony but it wouldn't bother me one bit if the discussion happened here on this thread.

irawon, sadly my only streakers are missing in action. I used to have Korean Snow and William Lachman. Maybe I will make a point to get one or two next year.

Beverly,

Sorry I missed your comment. it is truly appreciated. I'm getting myopic in my old age.

Irawon, I thought you did a great job of explaining the birds and bees. Much better than the book/pamphlet my mother gave me back in the day. Such a great story the way you delivered it. Who can criticize such straightforward honesty? I loved it and even understood it, eh.

Irawon, thanks for posting pictures of your lovely garden, some of us will just have to admire from afar. I am out of real estate for now, energy to dig and excuses to get more hostas this year.

To luckyladyslipper, I grow 2 kinds of chartreuse lamium (beedham white - broght yellow chartreuse with a nice clean white strip down the center of each leaf, with pure white flowers, and a darker chartreuse one with faint white line down the center of each leaf with bright pink flowers) on my raised hosta bed with sweet woodruff sprinkle around, they are really pretty and such a nice low cover to keep the weeds out, and haven't notice it taking over. I have had them for 3 years and they grew exactly where I planted them and filled out quite nicely. They do like some sun. Not sure if that is long enough time to determine if the will be invasive, but so far so good. Sweet woodruff on the other hand... . is more of a free spirit and will grow where ever they want, but it is easy to just pluck them off where they are not wanted. I still think they are pretty enough to keep, those neat & perfectly formed leaves with the starry white flowers are so unique, and makes such a nice contrast with the hostas. Here's a photo of my 2 kinds of lamium & sweet woodruff with a newly planted teaspoon.

This post was edited by maow on Sun, Jul 6, 14 at 9:10

maow, My lamium will grow nicely for a year or two. Both kinds I have are still alive, one barely, the other one had lots of dieback on it, but still alive. I thought it was because of where I live and the really cold spring we had, but sounds like everybody had an aweful spring. So my heucheras and hostas that died maybe had more to do with the weather then???

Mauw,

Thanks for taking an interest in this thread. I have the lamium on the right of your picture and it remains in a pretty clump, not invasive at all.

I eventually moved my Pandora's Box to another spot because I got tired of trying to keep it from being devoured by Sweet Woodruff... not great with the minis. Here's a picture of Alex Summers in a bed of SW in early June and he doesn't seem to mind it a bit.

Irawon, your comments are very nice, thank you so much.

Irawon, Your garden is spectacular! I keep going back to look at the first picture. It is just so pretty! I love the color combination that you have used. What is the blue ground cover? I think it really ties it all together and looks great with the hostas in the picture. What is the name of the blue and white hosta at the base of the tree? I need to get that one LOL.

Thanks for sharing!
Linda

'A question that I have wanted to pose is how do you determine the father/pollen parent from an open pollinated hosta. For example, is it possible for a bee to pollinate from one end of the yard to the next or is it more likely that the pollen parent/ father is close by?' - Irawon

Yes pollenation can be from a hosta across the yard. The only way to select the father is to cover the scape of the desired 'mother and also the father (as pollen from other plants could cross contaminate this pollen as well) The scapes would be pollenated by hand and then covered again. This is the only way to ensure you have the hybrid or you have seedlings from the same type of hosta. if desired.

I know this is done with Irises and probably with a whole host of other plants. It would be a nice thing to try, but I think that hosta seeds rarely reproduce desired characteristics. It is like seeds for Blue Spruce that don't come close to grafted specimens. It takes thousands of tries...but, who knows. It is fun to have seedlings and try.

Jon

Irawon, you and I like and grow a lot of the same perennials!...like the little blue ground cover sedum Jon is asking about. Tell him about the flowers! :-)

Irawon. Your Alex summers is gorgeous, is it in all dsy shade? Does the color stay the same soft green and blue all season?, or does it get darker later on? How do they compare in color to Tokudama F.?

Hi Linda,

The blue and white hosta is Aristocrat.The margin is yellow first thing in spring. The blue groundcover is sedum cauticola. It stays small in my garden and self seeds freely.
The yellow/blue combo happened quite by accident because I like to use what I already have in my gardens.

Edited to add that the sedum gets pink flowers later im the summer and that they are pink.

This post was edited by irawon on Mon, Jul 7, 14 at 14:45

Jon, thanks for the info about the pollen parent of an open pollinated seedling. Good to know that the pollen could be from a pollen parent across the yard. I have only 2 streaked hostas in 2 beds that could produce variegated seedlings, so potentially the pollen from these could get to the other beds. I also have many spruce and pine seedlings sprouting up in my beds. I didn't know that they wouldn't be true to the species.

Jo, I especially like perennials that still maintain a good structure/appearance after blooming like astilbe, but don't limit myself to those. I just recently bought 2 helleborus which I never tried before, the foliage is still quite nice after blooming. I'm looking forward to their blossoms early next spring. I hope they overwinter well.

Mauw, I'll take a look and take pics of my TF and AS as soon as I can. I have to go for an appointment now.

Mauw,

My Alex Summers is planted in the middle of a bed under three limbed up blue spruce. It doesn't get much direct sunlight. My Tokudama Flavo has the same growing conditions. I looked but I couldn't find any late summer pictures of the two.

The first AS picture was taken on June 3. This one I took today.

This post was edited by irawon on Mon, Jul 7, 14 at 15:10

This is T. Flavocircinalis, today, for comparison. The thing that I really like about A. Summers is it's upright habit.

You will love the easy to virtual non-maintenance of your hellebores! Mine are under the deck for 4 years now....evergreen leaves which stay pristine all season. No problem here with winters. These are tough perennials.

Unless you have room for lots of foliage (which I don't) you have the option of cutting away all of last year's foliage in the spring. You will be rewarded with lots of new leaves and the beautiful blossoms will be front and centre.

They look great amongst hostas!

Irawon do you live on an acreage?? Does anybody else live on an acreage or farm??
The rest of us garden in the city like me.....

Michelle

Moc, thanks for the approval re my birds and the bees story and I didn't miss the "eh".

Jo, I'm looking forward to the first hellebores blooms in my garden early next spring. I bought 2 plants from Loblaws because I liked the foliage. I planted one that I could enjoy from my kitchen widow and another near the front walkway to the front door.

Hi Michelle,

We moved to a country lot in 1977. We could see cows in the fields outside our bedroom window and sandpipers in our back yard. All the good farm soil had been stripped fom our property.. which we tried to replace and seeded for a lawn. We bought a lawn tractor before we bought curtains. There was only one elm tree in a back corner and that died. We planted trees and developed beds, made some bad decisions. I wish we had had the info available that is available online now.

Presently, we have over an acre of land. Suburbia has caught up to us. The properties that are being sold around us now have postage stamp lots. My daughter's new home is on one of those small lots.

The sky used to be black at night. Now I can see the lights from a nearby Walmart. I feel lucky to have the amount of greenery that I have around me. Recently, I was asked by one of the owner's of one of those postage sized lots whether I resented them and I said no, my reason being that all I wanted them to do was the best with the land they had.

This post was edited by irawon on Tue, Jul 8, 14 at 9:04

Oh my Irawon the city is starting to crowd you out!! Sounds like Calgary where my husband comes from. Where he grew up was outer edges of the city parks etc....now the city expands for miles beyond where he grew up. I believe he moved to Saskatchewan in 1989 when his parents moved this way. I grew up on a farm not far away from this city, and I've lived here since 1983. But gardening like I am now and hostas has only become recent.....hostas only last 4-5 years actually.

Michelle

I have lived it the same place my three children were raised . It is a 18.9 acres, with a view of Shuswap Lake and about 1/2 plus miles from where my kids went to elementary school. We have seem people come and some neighbors go and I am among the last of 3 that were the first on the hill. Kids are all grown and moved away and now that I am retired and remarried , I have the time to make my gardening parents proud to be a gardener. We have outside and inside pets as in horses , donkeys cats and dogs to keep us occupied when not gardening. Approximately a 3 acre yard with mature tree that we planted many years ago. Perfect place to grow hosta with loads of shade. One daughter just had her 30 yr grad reunion so our age is showing .

Skies here are still quite dark except the street lights the one neighbor insisted we needed and on a almost quiet dead end road in which Mctavish Myrle lives with her husband and 900 hosta and a couple cats and a dog. Always nice to have someone close with the same interests in gardening and they will have to carry me out before I ever want to move.

Interesting to know if I am the only one that lives in the same place since 1972. and on an acreage or city lot. Many changes in our home and yard since it had been an old apple orchard ripped out years before we bought . and just a field. The last three years has been a whirlwind of planting and changes after the hosta big hit

Hope I never bored the heck out of everyone
Faye

Faye I am not that old but not that young. My oldest is 29, second is 24 and my third is 17. There isn't much to choose from in hostas or other plants in this city. If you want selection you have to go to Saskatoon and then they seem to have the same old stuff over again with a few different names, but always too expensive for me.
I have four cats in the house all male but I did grow up on a farm, and because I came from a large family of nine kids we had massive vegetable gardens and potato fields we had to weed by hand. I hated it and stayed away from anything gardens for YEARS!! Then I slowly started but since we weren't rich we did not grow or spend money on flowers at the farm, my parents just did vegetables to feed all us kids. Interesting....

lol hostacats, I guess this makes me as old as dirt in your eyes . I too came from Sask. and still have relatives in S;toon. We lived 3 hrs south west of there in a really small town. would I move back? no

Faye I appreciate all the help I can get with this forum since I am so new!! I will not think you are as old as dirt, I will think you are very experienced. What is the name of the small town?? You moved away a long time ago. You would not move back to the small town or Saskatchewan??? I don't want to move to a large city...besides even though I have not been hosta gardening for many years I have spent enough money on that, my yard, the big pond, and all my koi.
Do you know where Jackfish lake is??

michelle

Yes I kind of know where it is, as a kid we useto go on a holiday in the summer to Jack Fish Lake and various places around North Battleford. I came from a small place called Laporte ( near Kindersley)
I use to go back home before my parents passed but not since, The wind never quits where I came from and remember mom having flowers that always winter killed and she would try the next season again. Northern Sask has trees but the only ones around where I grew up wer planted by my mom and dad or cariganna hedges to keep the snows from blowing. I have 6 goldfish but not friendly enough to name. I also have a waterfall area we put in last fall bit no big pond.
I think your lake town has grown since I was there but remember fishing and sleeping in a cold tent ha ha and bears

I grew up on a farm not far from Jackfish the hamlet, and close to jackfish lake. My cabin is on that lake small town of Meota, but it has become a bedroom community now, not many cabins left. I live in North Battleford, and yes the Kindersley area is much windier than here. My husband grew up in Calgary and wanted to return, but, I don't want to leave, for a city lot I have a bigger than normal backyard, and I've spent too much time and money on it. I'm staying. My parents are both still alive age 79 and 80.

Michelle, I'm not feeling crowded out at all because my little neighbourhood is still zoned rural and since we are on wells, our properties have to remain at least a 1/3 of an acre in size. Traffic has increased though but I'm retired, so that doesn't affect me that much. I do miss the the dark skies at night though.

Faye, your place looks like a little piece of heaven. I can't imagine looking after 18 acres plus. Our place is starting to get a little too much for us and DH and the kids are saying it's time to downsize... I will miss my hostas.

Irawon, when you said you miss the dark skies at night, I felt a kinship.

Indeed, I have often remarked about the years I drove through I-10 through Mississippi and it was a dark sky I could count the stars. I always left to drive to work late as possible, and it was just myself and the moon keeping pace with me. Now the same drive is lit up nine ways from Sunday, with a purple haze in the sky from all the casino development near the Gulf beaches. What chance do fireflies and stars have in a place like that?

I know it is bound to come to my White Dove garden too, what with the street lights invading my peaceful evening garden. Twilight is the best time, before those intrusive lights come on. It is too much! Blocking these lights from my garden is another reason for my 10 foot tall latticed screen going in. It may shelter the lightning bugs a bit, they need the darkness to twinkle.

One of my favorite books is The Evening Garden, which is of course a garden with fragrant hosta at my house. And with jasmine but it is not an evening bloomer like the hosta are. Preserving this small area for night pollinators might not be enough, but at least the backyards behind mine on the next street over (without folks fearful of the dark) are filled with a high canopy of trees holding back the lights and sounds of human activity..

Moc, what a beautiful description of your garden. I can almost smell the jasmine. I have one inside and love the fragrance...White dove is such a pretty name. We have a couple of doves that visit our garden every year. I've tried to get pictures of them but I'm not fast enough.

Michelle/Hostacats, as I expected you are much younger than my DH and myself. We could be your parents. :) Not a bad thought actually.

My parents moved from a rural county in north Alabama when I was small, during WWII. Of course, my many aunts and uncles and grandparents during those years were scattered across the south and while my mom worked at a military base, we traveled with my railroad widow granny to visit the family during the summers. I grew up with one part of my life suburban, the other part rural. My DH says I had a foot in three centuries, because that county did not get electricity nor indoor plumbing until I was almost a teenager. Heck, they were very proud to have it all, and I loved being with my cousins. I helped with the canning, hoeing cotton, churning butter, picking cotton, shelling peas, following my beloved grandpa in the furrows behind his plow, barefoot and talking mile a minute to him. He grew his own tobacco and hung the whole plants upside down inside his barn. Don't know what kind of tobacco it was, but he let me roll his cigarettes for him when I was about 4 or 5 years old. He was a great joker and my daddy looked like him, tall, lean, dark skinned and black haired, with some Native American background. You might say that part of my life could as easily be called late 19th century, a much simpler time.

Thanks, Irawon. I can grow the star jasmine as evergreen here, and that is along 100 foot of chainlink fencing. The single pot of Maid of Orleans jasmine (Joan of Arc) all by itself can perfume the air, but it is tender and I keep it in a pot to bring indoors during the cold season.

I like to name places of the heart. That's why I've always named the places I live. My first home that I bought myself was MoccasinLanding. When I sold it, I moved into a small house owned by a friend, lived there for a year on the river and called it Riverhouse. When my new fiance (old flame from college) and I bought the river house destroyed by Katrina one month after we moved in, I'd named it Fahanlunaghta (the place his mother was born in Ireland). It means, I am told, "fresh milk."

moccasinlanding I like your little piece of history just like almosthooked and irawon. You can be my mommy....lol...gosh I'm not that young!! Nice to know where your name comes from, I thought maybe native American history, which of course you have. Neat!!
I am going to get lots of hosta information from you guys.
My parents were not rich, lived on a farm, I am born in 1965 and we had no hot water, no toilet, used a toilet can in closet, no tv etc until sometime in the 70's. We heated our house with a wood stove and then a furnace. How I grew up is pretty much how my parents age group people grew up. My husbands mom and I could talk about similarities and we are a whole generation apart. People helped my dad out, gave a tv, installed plumbing to get a running toilet, tub and all, but it took longer for the hot water hook up. I remember my mom having to boil water on stove to have baths...which we had Saturday nights. Amazing looking back now. My generation of people had it good except for us, but we were happy, we didn't know any better. Nowadays they have everything.

Anyways, I will continue asking for help, reading forums and learning from you guys!! its great
michelle

Moccasin, hostacats, aren't we lucky to have all the amenities we have now? Your stories bring back memories of my childhood and much more simple times. We fetched water from a well, boiled clothes and hung them out in the sun to dry. Early on,there was no refrigeration, so everything had to be preserved or stored in root cellars for the winter. All meals were made from scratch.Going to a restaurant was unheard of. Do you remember the advent of the ice truck and the milk delivery truck pulled by horses? Popsicles cost $.05. Gosh, how much did hostas cost back then (in the 40's)?

Well......I have some stories of my childhood that were very different to people my own age, but you guys are a bit older and would have better stories than me. This would be more my mom and dad me thinks.....all in all life has changed as long as we are all happy, and seems to me we are because we all love hosta.

Michelle