Barrington, Illinois

We’ve all heard over and over again about the virtues of good garden soil. That elusive product called loam, a mixture of sand, silt and clay is described as a moisture retentive, well-drained medium. Sounds like a dichotomy to me. How can something be moisture retentive and well drained? Well, it can all be achieved with good soil structure. I'd buy a hosta, bring it home and dig a large hole, chop up the soil, shake most of the soil of the roots so I could spread them out, place the plant in the hole, and back fill with soil. At a later date if I wanted to divide the plant I'd dig it up, and it was nearly impossible to divide without chopping the plant up with a knife. The problem was the heavy clay soils native to northern Illinois. Without rehashing the story of soil structure which you can find in most gardening periodicals, I'd like to explain a discovery I made, through a meeting of the Northern Illinois Hosta Society.

At our spring 1994 meeting at DeVroomen Bulb Co. in Russell, Illinois, Andre Rutte gave a presentation on how hostas are grown in Holland. He emphasized how fast the plants grow because the soil is very sandy and has been amended with manure. The year before I had also visited the garden of Van Wade in Bellville, Ohio. Van has one the largest collections of hosta in the world, and has a H."Sum & Substance" nearly four feet high and ten feet across. Van presented his soil amending strategy at a previous Winter Scientific meeting, so I was aware of the importance of soil-structure. I was just beginning to propagate hosta varieties for sale and knew how slowly they increased in my garden due to the heavy clay soil. I reasoned that if I could amend my soil with enough organic matter the hosta would increase in a similar fashion as they did in Holland. That same summer the N.I.H.S. visited the garden of Bob and Barb Carlson in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where I noticed their use of mushroom compost for soil amendment. I got the address of there supplier of mushroom compost, which is a medium mushrooms are grown in, composed of sawdust, manure, and various plant nutrients. I decided to try to grow my hostas in soil amended with mushroom compost.

I ordered it, but decided after wheelbarrowing a truckload of mushroom compost that was enough work, so I piled it on top of the native soil about a foot deep, and planted my hostas right in the compost. All seemed well until the plants started wilting. I dug up a few plants and the roots were all shriveled. Later I found out that salt is used to kill pathogens while growing mushrooms, and high concentrations were burning the roots of the hastas I planted in it. To leach the salts I watered the area heavily. This worked and all went very well. The hostas flourished. They put out long divisions, and most importantly the root mass was a tangle of fine roots. Dividing the plants was easier also. I could dig into the soil with my bare hands and the plants would come right up. I'd shake the soil off the roots to divide them and the divisions would fall apart. It was working better than expected.

During the growing season of 1995 I needed to expand my hosta propagation area, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on more mushroom compost. I reasoned that one of the main ingredients in mushroom compost is manure, and there are a number of stables in my area that board horses. I had a bad experience with horse manure in the past carrying weed seeds, that germinated like, well, weeds! However some of the stables in the area don't pasture their horses; therefore the manure has fewer weed seeds. The stables have literally mountains of manure from stable bedding, which is comprised of mostly sawdust. Digging into the piles gets manure in different degrees of decomposition. I'm not looking for fresh, fertile, hot manure. I'm looking for a loose fertile growing medium, so digging into the mountains assures a well-composted product. For all you sitting there saying "Yuk! How disgusting digging into a smelly pill of manure," there is little odor in well-composted manure. If it did have a strong smell it would not be composted enough and could burn the plants. I'd fill five-gallon buckets, and large nursery containers with manure, truck them home and dump it about a foot deep where I wanted my new propagation beds. I plant the hostas and water well, stand back and watch them grow.

I can dig right into those beds with my hands to pull up a mass of roots. I planted some tissue culture liners of H. 'Blue Shadows"; we all know how slow this cultivar grows. All summer they sat there with only one leaf. In the fall I dug up one plant. The root mass was the size of a volleyball, with a tangle of fine roots! The plant had five dormant buds. I can hardly wait to see the results this year of that rich growing medium on those tissue culture plants. I'm now sold on the concept of good soil structure.

Adding organic matter to the soil will greatly improve the growth of my hostas. Whether I go to the extent that Van Wade does to get his super hostas or I just dig in copious amounts of manure or compost, the results are worth it in vigorous growth and large, beautiful plants. I'm planning to dig up each of my 350 hostas and amend the soil with lots of manure, and from now on I'll prepare the garden beds before planting.

The American Hosta Society