Northern Exposure

[Linda P]

This is the kind of Northern Exposure I prefer, not the kind we've had the last week.
Snow, wind, more snow, more wind....single digit temps this morning.
I'm ready for spring and winter has just begun!
Linda P

[SUEDIA]

Sure hope mine looks like that next spring. 3rd year for it, but not if we get hailed on again like last year. Such a disappointment, after waiting all winter for it and it looked so good. With my knee pain last year I just about gave up, but I did plant quite a few new one anyway. It will be better this year. Or I will be drinking in my sorrow. This weather just has to turn around sometime.
Linda, thanks for sharing such a beautiful hosta!!
Take Care
Sue

[jgh]

This has become my favorite of all the light-edged sieboldianas I've grown. Robert Frost has been striking for me, but NE has held up better through a longer season without deterioration of the margin. It has, however, been really slow for me. It would probably help if I fed it more regularly (like ever!).

Great picture - thanks!

[Linda P]

Thanks for the nice comments. It's been slow for me, too. This one is 9 years old, and has really been spectacular the last couple of years. I moved it from a crowded bed 3 years ago, and it happens to be planted in a small section of the garden that I refer to as the dung heap. When we moved here 22 years ago, there was a huge old sugar maple where this hosta now lives, and it went down in a storm the first summer we were here. The entire center of the tree was rotted out, all the way down into the stump. I chopped away at what was left of the stump, and then covered the whole thing about 3 feet high with some cow poo mixed with straw and leaves and grass clippings. Over the course of a few years, it rotted back down to ground level, and now the soil there is even better than rest of the already-great soil I have around here. Hostas grow like weeds there, and once I put Northern Exposure in there it really took off. Partly a function of the age of the hosta, I'm sure, but also the extra organic material really helped. I planted two bulbs of one of the oriental/trumpet lily hybrids just behind this hosta, and in 3 years I had 10 or more blooming size bulbs. The lilies reached 9 feet in height the year before last, somewhat smaller last summer. I moved them because they were taking over the hosta bed, and also because the shade was getting too dense for them to do well. I"m putting a pic of the lilies here...this pic shows them leaning over after they surmounted the top of the 6 foot stake I put in to hold them up.
Did I have a point here? Oh, yes...the great size of this hosta has to be due to all the wonderful organic matter there. So keep adding that compost!
Oh, and I agree, Jim, that NE holds up far better than Robert Frost, though I love that one too.
Linda P

[jgh]

Linda...

ooooohhhh - I want a dung heap!!!

if you like lilies, have you tried the Martagons? They are true "shade lilies" - they evolved as woodland lilies totally separate from the entire rest of the lilies we know... great whorled leaves and smallish Turk's turban flowers in profusion. The orientals will usually grow where hostas do, but I never feel they are doing their best growth and blooming - the martagons are genetically matched to the light conditions and soil that hostas like. I'm a big fan, though I've never been able to afford more than the two clumps I have...

[Carol W]

Northern Exposure one of my top favorites and was the first expensive hosta I bought about 9 years ago. I remember I took several trips 3 or 4 and phone calls to the hosta farm to buy one that summer, everytime they still had not divide any yet. On the last call towards the end of summer I was told it would available the following week. Of course once again excited I jumped in the car the next week drove the 40 plus miles to find out "nope they hadn't gotten to Northern Exposure yet", but we do have... guess she could see how disappointed I was. So she said let me go out in the field and dig one up. OK now I was excited beon words I was going to get a good size Northern Exposure with several eyes, sure it might cost a little more but I wasn't going to get a tiny single eye with two or three leaf baby one! About a half hour later she's drives back with a single eye 2 leaf wilting hosta in a pot...wow shocking. I paid the $25. plus tax for this sad looking Northern Exposure. Drove home the 40 plus miles thinking I hope it makes it thur the rest of the growing season and the winter. I get home grab the shovel start to place it in the ground and notice there is only a few small roots which have been broken off, could they even feed this hosta??? So the rest of the summer and fall I watered and babied this sickly looking hosta. Must of helped the next spring one eye with 3 leaf appeared no size to it but, ok it's alive! 3 years later it's still cames up each spring with only one eye...4th year my gosh there is 2 eyes....not until the 7th year did it have 5 eyes. This year it's was still at the 5 eyes.

Linda your's is beautiful and I hope by this spring mine looks half as good as yours. Also it good to know others say it's a slow grower, all this time I've thought mine still was stuggleing!

[Linda P]

Jim...I would love to try the martagon lilies. Somehow, I've always managed to spend all my available gardening funds on hostas. Now that I have more hostas than anyone needs, maybe I can add the maragons this year. The dung heap would be a good spot for one!
Carol...what a sad tale! It sounds like the way I got Niagara Falls. It was potted up, freshly dug, and in my excitement to finally have a chance to get one, I paid the $35 (a huge fortune for me, more than I had ever paid for a hosta back then) and hauled it home. It looked like a really strong division, and was the one the grower told me had the best amount of roots of all the divisions she had potted up. When I got home, I found a few little short chopped-off roots. The thing went dormant almost immediately, and I was sure it was dead. The grower said to wait, it would come back next year or she would replace it. Well, it did come back, with a few tiny leaves, and eventually grew into a nice plant. I never bought another hosta from that grower, though. No need to buy plants from someone who doesn't understand the importance of selling something that the customer will be happy with. Chris and Brian have the root situation covered! I've never gotten plants anywhere else with the massive root systems the Hallson plants have.
I hope your NE benefitted from all the rain we had here in Illinois this year and doubles in size for next year!
Linda P

[Carol W]

Linda I have to wonder if it might be the same grower, since we both live in N W IL? If not the same one, like you I'm so happy to have found Chris and Brian by far every hosta I have gotten from them has had a great root system, the hostas are larger, healthy and true to name then any I ever gotten from that hosta farm over the years. It's good that your Niagara Falls did make it!

My NE did look the best it ever has this year. Over last winter I did grow a few seeds from NE (OP the bees did it) and had one that was streaked, not sure if it will stay that way or even make it though this winter, should post a picture. 1st leaf was frosted, 2nd leaf has a few streaks and the 3rd show the most streaking.

[Linda P]

What great luck, Carol! I haven't planted any seeds from NE. I did do some from Northern Halo a few years back, and got some nice blues, one of which I moved back into the garden this year from the seedling growing area.
I wonder, too, if we might have both visited the same grower. I'll send you a PM.
Linda P