The Ozarks Chronicle/Gardening

"When I was about 13 years old, I went to work for an older lady in St. Joseph. I mowed her yard and weeded her flowers, and she had these hostas. I didn't know what they were, but I found later they were Ventricosa," Russell says. "Some of them were in one of the places I was mowing, so I asked her 'Do you mind if I dig these up?' She wanted to give me a big plant instead, but I said, 'No, I just want to take these.' So I took six or eight little seedlings, about two to three inches tall," he says.

Hostas are shade tolerant and most of them grow best when they don't receive much, if any, direct sunlight.

"Mom and Dad at the time had a lot of shade, so I planted them," he says. "They grew and we divided them, and when I left, Mom and Dad kept them going."

Move ahead in time several years to a time when Russell, an auditor at Fort Leonard Wood, and his wife, Mary Ellen, a school librarian, bought a house outside Rolla.

"When we moved out here, we had a lot of shade, so I asked Mom and Dad, 'Can I get some cuttings?'" he says. He brought home several Ventricosa cuttings, and started growing hostas here.

"At that time I was going down to Central Hardware. They had some hostas. I bought one. I don't know what it was. I call it Big Blue now, but I have no idea what it was. I started looking around and found out there were more varieties of these things. I started seeing more and more of them."

One day he found out from a co-worker, Jesse Emmons, of Dixon, that Emmons was a hosta grower and that there was a national associaion called the American Hosta Society.

That opened up a whole new world of information to Russell, and he was thoroughly hooked.

"My wife, bless her soul, let me buy them. We just started buying and planting them," he says.

Now the Russells have at least 690 plants, representing 160 varieties of hostas.

"It's my passion," says Russell, whose hosta garden was on the Phelps County Master Gardeners Spring Garden Tour twice in 2006.

Russell's hosta garden is spread throughout the property, arranged in beds of various shapes and sizes. The plants, too, are of varioius sizes and hues; some spread out and stand up while others are small. One is growing in a tree stump

"Originally, we wanted everything big. That's fine, but there's a lot of beauty in the little ones, too," he says.

Some of the plants are blue; they require full-time shade.

"The blues can't take any sun. Sunlight will bleach them out, and they'll fade into green," he says. "Yellow plants will take a little more sun, although we're not talking about the 4-in-the-afternoon-beating-down-on-concrete kind of sun."

Reaching down, he pulls back the leaves of one to reveal red stems.

"Here's something new. They're trying to get the red in the stems to grow into the leaves," he says of botanical researchers. "This one is called Red October."

Russell says hostas will explode (botanically speaking) if you give them good soil.

"The soil amending is what I found out is critical," Russell says. "The American Hosta Society recommends growing them in a mixture of one-third pine bark fines, one-third compost and one-third soil. so you're taking your own soil and putting in a two-thirds mixture."

Pine bark fines, a byproduct of processing pine bark, is hard to find, but the fines are sometimes in other products, such as Gardeners Soil Conditioner.

Sometimes I'll put in pine bark mulch," he says.

Amending the soil loosens it, allowing oxygen to get to the roots, Russell says.

"That's very critical to developing the root system," he says.

Acknowledging that his original hostas weren't planted with any soil amending, Russell says he now amends new beds and also amends beds whenever he takes any plants out to divide them and transplant them.

"The plants I'm growing are a much sturdier plant," he says.

Russell says his method of amending is informal.

"When I build a new bed, I'll take off the sod and throw that into the compost pile," he says. "Then I'll loosen the soil and add some more because I've taken the sod off. If I've got loose soil six inches deep, I'll add another six inches of pine bark mulch or pine bark fines and six inches of compost. The I'll just take a shovel and turn it in. You could also till it in."

When he removes a plant for transplanting, Russell says he will also add layers of pine and compost.

"My goal is to have soil that I can loosen with a hand spade," he says. "I've already put in a bunch of compost and a bunch of pine bark in some of these beds, but if I get into a soil that is not looking right, I'll go in and amend it again.

The addition of compost and pine bark mulch also promotes raised beds, he notes, but cautions, "Don't just lay the compost on top of the ground. You've got to dig down into the soil and mix it."

Through the summer, Russell also takes a sharp shovel and cuts a circle around each plant to cut the surface roots of trees.

"They're competing for the nutrients with the hostas," he says.

Russell adds nutrients to the soil periodically throughout the growing season.

"I fertilize with a 13-13-13 fertilizer," he says. "I put it on in the early spring, late spring and fall. I just use my little hand spreader."

In addition, he adds a product called Milorganite, a 6-2-0 fertilizer produced by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewer District.

"When I started, they recommended every 90 days, but I put it on about every 45 days," he says. "It gives the beds a human smell and it keeps the deer out. Deer love hostas; they're like steak to the deer."

Russell says he has no way to prove it, but "I don't have as many moles now, and I think it's because of the Milorganite."

There area couple of other potential hazards to hostas.

"Voles love them, and they can take a plant down quick," he says. "I have had to deal with voles occasionally. And there's something called Virus X that I've been reading about. I don't know much about it, because I've never had a problem with it."

Russell says a hosta grower can do as much, or as little as he or she wants with the plants. Some people plant them in themed beds; some use lots of companion plants.

"I've not done a great deal with companion plants. I've got some Jacob's ladder in with a few hostas, some bleeding hearts and some coral bells, but there are some people who put in a lot of different plants.

"And some people dig them and divide them frequently. I usually just let them grow if they're looking good. If they don't look right, I'll pop them out and move them and amend the soil," he says. "You've got to walk your garden to keep an eye on which ones are dong well and which ones might need to be moved."

Russell says hostas are fun to grow, and don't require a lot of research as some plants, such as roses, do.

"I'm just a guy who likes to grow plants, but you can do anything you want with them," he says.

In the photos set within the story you see a group of big, sturdy hostas, a little hosta in a stump and Don Russell loosening the soil before planting. Right, ferns make great companion plants in a hosta garden.

For some more on hosta care, click on the following topics for more photos:

Amending soil

Dividing hostas

Cutting roots