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We have a shady front yard and I would like to fill the flower bed in front of the house with various hostas. I'm clueless when it comes to gardening. I've read that hostas do well in the shade. Does anyone know when a good time is to plant hostas? We live in Maine, so it probably won't get really warm until June. If anyone has recommendations for any other plants or flowers that do well in the shade, I'd appreciate it a lot! Thanks for any and all info!
I've had luck with Bleeding Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Lily of the Valley, Columbine, Solomon's Seal, Creeping Wintergreen, and various ferns when I lived in MI.
Hostas are awesome, hardy, easy to grow perennials. One thing you need to know is that the deer love them, so if you have a lot of deer, it could mean trouble.
The time to plant them is in the spring. They are kind of pricey, and I'm not sure why, because you can hack a big one into about six plants and in a season they will grow to good size. There are little bitty short ones and huge ones and there are many different colors, so you could certainly fill a space with an interesting variety of hostas. I'm in zone 5.
Here is my new favorite place to hang out for info on Hostas. Cubits.org: Hostas cubit [registration is free]
I LOVE them. only been into them about 3-4 yrs now, and i probably have 80 varieties, 70 or so named and the rest are NoID's.
Familiar yourself with HVX, it's a virus that effects hostas. [just google HVX] and if you are spending lots of cash on them, you would be quite upset if they were diseased.
As for planting ... as soon as your soil is workable. I'm zone5 and i've planted as early as April... but if they are unfurling, and you have a frost coming.. do cover/protect them.
If you have a Costco near you, they have packages that contain bulbs of several plants. They have a number of them that are specifically for shade. This is the first time that I have seen anything like this, but each package has about 3 different plants with varying heights for your garden. I lived in a home with lots of shade for years and never had anything like this. I always planted impatients because it was difficult to find plants that did well in the shade.
Just don't buy hostas from "Big Box" stores they are notorious for infected plants.
OH -- one of the best sites to browse Hosta images and even learn about HXV... http://hostalibrary.org
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