Huggable hosta


The garden staple ‘Fire and Ice’. Story and photos by Dorothy Dobbie


Mulching with cocoa husks or pine needles will also discourage slugs. Indeed, broad leafed hostas appreciate the slight rise in acidity that might come from the needles.


dom in places where most things are reluc- tant to thrive; places where the sun reaches only part of the day. They came here to Canada via Europe,


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courtesy of a doctor and amateur botanist called Philipp Franz von Siebold who culled the first of these eye treats from Japan for garden-mad Dutchmen at the height of bo- tanical discovery in the mid-19th century. The plant, which also originated in China and migrated to Japan and Korea, is called Giboshi in Japanese, but it was named in Europe for Austrian botanist Nicholas Thomas Host. The Japanese not only found hostas to


be decorative, they found them to be tasty. They eat the young stems and leaves of Hos- ta ‘Montana’ (and other varieties), calling the dish yuki-urui. Hosta stems are eaten


16 • Spring 2012


ig, bold and sometimes blowsy, hosta dominates the shadier parts of our gardens, a rescuer from garden bore-


lightly steamed and dressed with sesame oil and ginger or perhaps with vinegar or a little mirin (sweet rice wine) to add flavour be- cause they have a very mild flavor. Like most greens, they are best picked young before they develop a bitter taste. But most people would prefer to just en-


joy these lovely plants rather than make a meal of them.


Growing the perfect, blemish-free hosta


Some people get very discouraged when it comes to hosta because they are so attrac- tive to slugs. By mid summer, the foliage can become a spider web of tattered remnants; however, there are some things you can do to mitigate the problem. Firstly, the thick, ribbed, wavy hosta types are the least pal- atable to our slimy friends. Look for Hosta ‘August Moon’ (gold with heart-shaped leaves and ripple margins), ‘Twilight’ (dark green leaves with wide creamy edges),


‘Fortunei Hyacinthina’ (gray green, broad heart-shaped leaves), or ‘Regal Splendour’ (cool blue leaves with wavy, creamy white margins), all of which are in the 20 to 24- inch height and spread range. A larger but equally repulsive (to slugs) hosta is ‘Blue Umbrellas’ with 14-inch corrugated leaves. It grows three feet tall and six feet wide under the right conditions and is fairly sun- tolerant.


Mulching with cocoa husks or pine


needles will also discourage slugs. Indeed, broad leafed hostas appreciate the slight rise in acidity that might come from the needles. The U.S. Hosta Growers Association rec- ommends what they call “pine straw” as the best mulch for hostas. (Never mulch more than a couple of inches deep to avoid infes- tations of voles. Keep the mulch away from the stems.) The sharp pine needles appar- ently discourage slugs. Another method is to take one part


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