Welcome.

Rock of any kind retains heat. This will reflect back up onto your hosta and cause it to lose moisture.

You're probably dealing with either cutworms or rabbits.

And yes, I'd replace the rock with something organic, like cypress, cedar or hardwood mulch. Even pinebark needles.

However, none of these will likely address your bug/critter problem. If it's cutworms, consider using something like Sluggo PLUS or Bug Geta PLUS. Make sure you get the PLUS.

sevin is an insecticide ...

slugs are mullosks...

useless if your problem is slugs... or heat

ken

Who was it.....Sandy?.....who had roly polys running amok at night eating her hosta? They were decimating the plants! They do it at night.

Quite possibly there were egg masses attached beneath the river rocks, and they survived to hatch out in your new hosta bed.

If nothing else, put the river rock around your mailbox post, if at the street, unless you have plantings there. Otherwise, save them as aggregate for a paving project!

BTW, welcome to the forum. Glad to have you. Show us your garden when you have the leaf-eaters under control. :)

The rocks may or may not cause other problems in your zone 5, but they are not the source of your insect problem. It could be argued that organic mulch would attract more pests. The disturbing of the soil likely triggered more activity in the area. Before shotgunning a chemical solution it is always best to ID your foe. That may involve late night or early morning investigations as to what is eating them. Pix of the damage may also help ID the buggers.

tj

A rock mulch will keep the soil cool underneath it. Never tried to mulch hostas with it though, except the bed of minis, which are doing fine. No pill bugs there. Nothing to eat. No slugs, either.

Rock mulch is wonderful for clematis, keeps the roots cool.

The pillbugs, btw, are active in the daytime here, too, Moc. The plant collars are working fine, except for a darling (sic) family of raccoons that keep pulling them off here and there. They don't hurt the plants, they are just looking for worms and grubs, but they are sure pesty, digging in logs, turning over rocks, getting in the woods pond, knocking over plants, dragging out water plants and causing me to gnash my teeth at them. Lol if it ain't one thing, it's a dozen!

Sandy

Thanks, Sandy, for coming to the rescue. First hand experience is the best. It seems your population of pill bugs went viral on you, and so far mine has not--but I know it could be a tipping point--any time....FERAL PILL BUGS. Predator of hosta.....glad there is help for the problem. You have a benevolent let-live respect for the raccoons, which I admire, but is more faceted because I fear for my parrots and my dogs. Death to the parrots by raccoon has happened before.....rabies for my dogs has not happened, but it is highly POSSIBLE, not simply PROBABLE in this area. Thus if the raccoon doesn't kill my hosta, the two doxie girls will kill the hosta following the scent trail of those raccoons next day....so I cannot be too tolerant of the coons. :)

So far there is a mama coon and her three babies, but if they get to be too big a problem we'll trap them out and relocate them. One year we had them getting into our attic and had to put a stop to that. I saw they had figured out our "locking" trash can a few nights ago, so a bungie cord had to be applied to that. I hope they will move on before winter but that remains to be seen.

We don't have dogs and our cats are inside by dark, so no problem there.

Being backed up by maybe 50 acres of woods along the interstate, there is a lot of room for wildlife and they stray up here all the time. We have foxes, possums, and all kinds of critters. Even get an armadillo or two passing through once in a while, and there are turkeys out there somewhere, I have heard them but never seen any.

Sandy

This post was edited by mosswitch on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 22:51