What killed my hosta?

[harvest122]

I've been growing hosta for a few years now and never had any problems. This spring i had 7 or 8 hosta that did not come back, and almost seemed a little mushy at the crown. Most of these were new hostas last year but a couple had been growing for 2 or 3 years. All but one of these were planted under some arbs and i am wondering if it is to dry for them to survive the winter?? it usually seems very dry digging it that area, but i did soak them down one late fall day. Also when I dug them up to put new ones in their place the roots of a few still looked healthy. And there is another one that barley had signs of life (warwick comet) which i put in a pot and now looks like a mini. Thanks in advance in just trying to figure out whats killing some of my new favorites

[kHT]

I too had several die and suspect that it's due to that area being so dry. I also know that some of my damage to them were due to hungry crows pulling out the crowns as they
were just poking up.

[Buckeye]

Now we have to worry about crows too? Thanks KHT.

harvest122, what you may be experiencing when you find a mushy crown is bacterial soft rot. Next time you find one, give it a good whiff and if it smells like dead fish, then you know it has been hit by bsr. This is the same disease that turns iris rhizomes to mush after a borer goes through them, but it can hit many other types of plants too.

It isn't unusual to see on newer planted plants, but I have seen a lot of it this year on mature established plants. When we had all the early warm weather and the early hostas came out, and then got froze off, the bacteria started in the damaged leaf tissue and then moved down to the crown. Often times the crown can be rotted to the point of death, or at least to the point of taking years to recover. In most of these cases, if you dig up the plant, the roots will look great, but the crown will be a mushy slimy, smelly nothing.

Here is a link with some good info. The info on bsr is on pgs 7-8:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/sul14.pdf

[Mark Raw]

A similar thing happened with my hosta June. it had been in varying sizes of pot for a few years then all of a sudden it just stopped. After cleaning the plant and splitting the decent parts into 2 different pots it managed to survive but seems very slow to make any strength back. Maybe I am expecting too much as I guess they are like new plants again but at least it survived, and I now have 2 of it, one in sun one in shade.