Hosta Plant Winter Care Guide

As early as 1839, America was enamored with the Japanese gibōshi. These low-light tolerant foliage plants are excellent additions to any indoor or outdoor garden. We’ll take an in-depth look at how to prepare hostas for winter. Learn all about Hosta winter care.

Hosta Plants During the Winter Months

Hostas are a gift from the far East. These beautiful variegated perennial plants are the pride of American gardeners everywhere.

Unlike other plants, your hosta plant is robust and survives until the next season. You do not need to keep them indoors in an unheated garage to protect them from extreme cold.

With the proper precautions, they will survive even if the ground freezes over. The leaves o not survive the cooler temperatures, but the rest of the plant is safe underground.

During the early fall, once the temperatures dip, you know winter is rolling around soon, and gardeners start thinking about their Hostas. Here is all you need to know to protect your plant for winter from the hard freeze.

How To Prepare Hostas for Winter Months

The hosta plant is a perennial, but it’s not an evergreen. They go into a winter slumber after their leaves die. There are many things you can do to winterize hostas.

Preparing your Hosta plants for the winter months is crucial for superior growth when the next spring rolls out. When it comes to Hostas, it’s all about size. Who’s hosta is the biggest with the biggest leaves?

Stop Fertilizing

Hosta plants go into a dormant phase for the winter months. If you continue fertilizing your plants past late summer, they might not go dormant.

Then you’ll face the problem of new shoots in the cold temperatures, giving the hosta plants undue stress. This problem is why we must stop Fertilizing in the last third of the growing season.

Retain Moisture Throughout the Winter

You are not supposed to water Hostas for winter. Doing so will break their winter slumber. However, we need to ensure they retain enough moisture to use throughout the winter.

To do this, you must water your hostas regularly in the ground or container hostas generously every time the soil gets one or two inches dry.

Water more frequently from the late summer onwards. However, do not flood them, but keep the soil moist. Hosta plants face root rot from being overwatered, particularly potted hostas

This way, you give them their best shot at storing enough water for winter.

Prune the Leaves

To prepare hostas for winter, you must prune their leaves. You prune the plant with garden shears leaving about an inch left.

When you do this, define how many benefits of this practice you reap. The same rules apply to Hostas in the ground and container hostas. If you have Potted Hostas indoors, you can

Late Fall

Although the old foliage on your hosta plants may be turning yellow by now, removing the leaves is unnecessary. Let them continue to feed the plant until the first frost hits.

However, if you contend with foliar nematodes, you can remove the foliage as early as late fall. If you don’t mind cutting the photosynthetic time short for your plants, you can prune them this early.

According to the American Hosta Society, removing all nematode foliage, destroying it, or removing it from your property will ensure nematode-free foliage next spring.

Pruning them at this time would be the most labor-intensive. If you are someone who can’t rest until their garden is clean, fall is when you should strike

After the First Frost Damage

After the leaves sustain winter damage and die, signaling the plant base to go into hibernation, you can remove them. Some people choose not to. It is a personal preference.

By now, your leaves will have turned yellowish brown but remain upright. You must still use garden shears or scissors to remove the foliage yourself.

You have missed the time to rid your garden of nematodes since they would be in the ground by now. However, you allowed them to store as much food as possible in the hosta plant crown. That will ensure they will become quite large next growing season.

A Couple Weeks After the Frost

This is the last chance to cut your dead foliage back before the hard frost. Now your Hosta plant’s leaves have turned completely brown and fallen down.

Removing the leaves at this time is the easiest. The leaves have entirely disconnected from the plant’s crown. You can pick them up with your hand or rake them away.

However, your winter hosta garden will look like a graveyard until you clean it up.

Not at All

You have the option of not removing your leaves at all. They will turn into a mulch layer over your plants.

However, if the hosta’s dead leaves carried any diseases or became infected with bacteria or fungi after they died, that may damage the plants.

The dead leaves of your hosta plant might also start rotting around the hosta crowns. If this is a risk you are willing to take, you can leave your hosta for winter as they are.

However, we believe pruning timely is better for Hosta winter protection.

Vole Control

The next step is to protect your winter hostas, particularly the crown, from voles. Voles are rodents that usually eat grass but look for food underground once winter arrives.

To prevent them from eating your precious winter hostas, you can use a mixture of castor oil and dish soup suspended in water. During the fall, using an injector, spray the following recipe all over your hostas for winter. This also applies to outdoor potted hostas.

1. 2-3 Cups Castor Oil
2. 3/4 Cup Dish Soap
3. 5 Gallons Water

Mulching

During the fall, we mulch our Hosta plants. When we mulch our garden, we make our job easier in the future. Mulch keeps the soil cool and moist and stops weeds from growing.

It also breaks down over time, leaving the soil fertile so shoots can absorb nutrients in the spring.

Before winter arrives, cover hostas with a thin layer of mulch. One inch thick for mini hostas and two inches for larger.

In nature, after fall, the dead leaves of the hostas act as natural mulch. We can imitate that by adding a few inches of pine straw. It will protect the ground during the cold months.

Once the cold weather is on its way out, the ground warms, and spring is just around the corner. Now it’s time to remove mulch from the soil line so new hosta leaves can grow. The new growth in the early spring is the reward for all your hard work.

Divide Overgrown Hostas

Once your hostas bloom in the early spring, they will grow well into the summer until the fall. If you notice they are too big, you can divide the plant into smaller sections.

Dig your overgrown plant carefully in the late summer, protecting the root system. Shake or wash excess dirt and then divide the hostas into smaller new transplants.

Conclusion

You know everything about hosta winter care. This hardy plant can survive the hard freeze. Good luck and happy gardening!