(bright music) - I'm Erik with Landscape Garden Centers.

And today we're going to talk about hostas.

There are thousands of different varieties of hostas, and they are developing thousands more as we speak.

Hostas are an awesome plant to use.

Some people are kind of getting tired of hostas, but the same time is when you look at what a hosta can provide and how easy it is to grow and how little care it takes to grow a hosta.

So that's why hostas are going to be remaining popular, because they are great plants to use in a partial-shade to shade area.

And in some cases, you can do some that are in the full sun.

So when I say full sun for a hosta, I'm saying is in that morning sun works well.

In some cases, like I've got some in-substance hostas that are in full sun.

I will have a tendency when it's really, really hot that the leaves will actually burn back.

But they still will flourish.

The foliage is going to be a little bit tough at first, but after the heat of the summer, I'll just go out and trim off the leaves that have been sunburned.

Yes, hostas will get sunburned, and no, there is no type of sunscreen available.

Make sure that when you're planting a hosta is find a good spot.

And when I say a good spot, as hostas can handle pretty tough soil, but the better the soil, the better plant you're going to end up with.

And when you're looking at buying hostas, they come in all different shapes and sizes.

Some will stay very compact and very small.

There'll be hostas out there that are so small that they actually grow very, very slow and they become actually a plant collector's dream because hostas in general, keep on growing larger and larger from the base.

And this is another shareable plant, where we can take this plant, and at the end of the season or at the beginning of the season, we can carve off a piece of it, basically the root system, and pass that onto our friends and relatives.

Hostas are really, really good plants.

They're resilient to many pests and diseases.

They also will flower.

Now, in some cases, the flowers are insignificant.

But in other cases is when you are massing the same variety of plant in the same area, they look really amazing because when they bloom, they'll all be blooming at the same time and then that's when the quantity of blooms become very, very apparent within the landscape.

So this is what to look for now from late August or from August into September, as you're going to see a lot of the hostas are starting to bloom, and you're going to start to see these stems start to rise out of the leaves.

And then they're all gonna drop.

They're going to put a little bit of a trumpet flower out.

And these trumpet flowers, they'll have, maybe, around 16 flowers that are just going to mass out and bloom all at the same time.

Now, the thing that really stinks about hostas is when you have a hailstorm.

In most cases, that is not going to hurt the plant.

It just hurts the looks of the plant.

Once again, the leaves are what's making the food.

This is where photosynthesis is taking place.

And when a hole goes through the leaf, it also damages the leaf.

And if that's completely a turn off, then you can go ahead and trim out that leaf.

And hopefully others will develop.

Hostas are really easy to take care of.

I will actually, once we have a good hard freeze and all of the hosta leaves are flat to the ground again, I'll take the mower and mow right over them.

And I can do that in the fall or I'll do that in the spring for a spring cleanup.

The interesting thing about the hostas are the leaves.

And you're going to notice that these leaves is that they'll actually have created these hostas that are opposite.

You'll have the green on the inside or the green on the outside.

Two different varieties.

And then you have hostas that actually will have a blue hue to them.

For example, this hosta, which is called a blue angel hosta, has more of a blue hue.

So the amazing thing to remember about hostas is, yes, they're used a lot, but they're used a lot because they work.

They work well at many different situations.

Hostas can get very tall.

They can be two to three-feet tall.

They can be four to five to six-feet wide.

They can be really small also.

So, if you're having a problem in finding something for a specific area, don't forget the hosta.

Don't sign off on it, because it is a really, really good plant to use.

I'm Erik of Landscape Garden Centers.

Keep it growing.