Approx. 180 hostas in quart pots and about 18 in gallon pots.
Mayan Moon, dream queen, Patriot, Undulata, brim cup, wide brim,and some other random ones.

I am planning on donating almost of it to the local community plant sale in the Spring, so planting and digging 180 pots would be out of the question.

After reading a few posts and researching overwintering hostas in pots, i thought i would do this.
1. move out to the yard to rain and sun.
2. wait until it dies back, and trim.
3. wait until freezing, then cover in a plastic tarp (would this substitute tipping the pot on its side?). and then mulch with 3 or 4 inches of straw on top(i got those 2 bales you see on the right)
4. then in the spring, remove straw mulch and tarp.

what do you guys think? did i just waste my money, and buy 180 pots with compost?

Thanks for any help.

NEVER...EVER .. leave a black pot in the sun .... i have no idea why you are moving them out into the sun ????

never.. let a frozen pot get rained on.. or snow melt.. pots tend to turn into ice cubes ... and roots need air as much as being surrounded by ice ...

once the pots are frozen ... stack them [before they freeze to the ground] .. on their sides.. on the north side of a building [no sun] ... flat pyramid shape [or like firewood] against the structure .... and ignore them until late spring...

plastic can attract vermin... mice... voles... etc .... if that is a problem ... beware.. perhaps bait the area ...

you said you have read up on this... and now you are discounting everything you read.. and winging it ... whats that all about .... lol

your ideas MIGHT work.. or NOT .... all we can do .... is tell you how we did it ... and GOOD LUCK!!!!!

ken

Keep your eye on the prize, here... You want them to go into normal dormancy, freeze solid, stay frozen solid with no thawing and refreezing, then to have them come normally out of dormancy in the spring.

A plastic cover over the pile would pretty much guarantee varmints would move into the nice warm dry area under it... and probably destroy plants. The plastic would also gather heat, encouraging unhealthy thawing and refreezing.

Ken described the process well... once they are down for the season, let them freeze and stack them up someplace out of the sun to prevent uneven heat/cold cycles. Since you have straw, I'd toss it over the pile... minimizes dessication - drying of the soil by sublimation in dry, cold air... but, of course, a pile of straw once again creates a varmint home, so poison baits are a good idea.

and about cutting them back... since you got them at a big box store, there is a high likelihood that at least some of them have HVX. It would be very easy to spend a couple of hours cutting all of them back and using your shears to spread the disease through the whole lot of them. Since sterilizing your cutter between each of that many plants seems impossible, I'd just wait until the freeze takes them down for good, then pull all the foliage off with my hands while stacking them for the winter.

And just for ultra-safety purposes, I'd put all that foliage someplace it couldn't put the virus back into my garden... if you have a neighborhood gardener you don't like, put it in their compost pile...

The tarp idea was as a replacement for the tipping over and avoiding drowning the frozen plants with rain. your right about the greenhouse effect of the plastic, i'll avoid this, and follow your advice.

I never really had a vermin problem, so why create an environment where it can have one. I never knew where they go for the winter, now i know..

I did think about HVX, but honesty, every picture i see about HVX, bleeding of colors , thinning and bubbling of the green areas (which look like pebbling), i really can't distinguish it all too well, especially with these new cultivairs in this lot. All my hostas are slug food by mid summer anyways. I did get sluggo this year, but it was too late to save what i had. Next year might be better. But if i do find something suspicious next spring, in the garbage it goes.

Again - Ken and Idiothe, thanks for all the advice, if your interested, and want a few, let me know. i can try shipping some to you.
But then you have to let me know how to bareroot these correctly.

WHile on the subject here, is it really ok to keep hostas in pots in a 7a/6b zone? I still have many hostas that I purchased this year, that have not been planted yet, and are in pots still. I thought I had to get them in before the winter or they would have a chance of dying from the cold or freeze-thaw-feeze that pots can get.

So, after reading here, if it is possible, I would LOVE to keep them in pots till the spring, when I can plant them in nicer areas. So all I have to do is stack them on their sides on a northern wall like a pile of firewood? That would be great if I could do that!

On another note, I have stopped purchasing hostas from the store chains for a while now. I had noticed several hostas at my Home Depot with HVX. Did inform the manager, told him to throw them out, but not sure if he did or not.
Anyway, ever since then, I refuse to buy them other than from reputable companies or my hosta friend here in NJ.

I did not say this to bum you out, but just to keep an eye out. As I have learned from here, the hostas can have HVX without any visable signs for 3 years I believe.

Otherwise, it looks like you got a great deal! I wish my HD put on an end of season plant sale like that!
Christy

I happened to visit him in spring when he was evaluating his losses. He waited until freeze, then stacked the hostas into pot pyramids, covered in straw, put on a tarp, then weighted it down. He had massive losses... he figured he maybe didn't get the moisture right, probably had some greenhouse warming from the tarp... not having enough shade... and also had varmints move in and damage some of the plants.

So my suggestions weren't just speculation - they came from a really smart horticulturalist who never did that again... He believed the answer was to go simpler... good moisture, freeze solid, put in the shade, tip on side, maybe cover with hay/straw to prevent more moisture loss... then bring them slowly out of dormancy.

By the way, you can "cheat" a little in the spring. I bring some of the pots into a cool greenhouse and get a jump start on our notoriously long Minnesota winter. Not too early, but you could jumpstart the spring by a month or so without doing any damage...