Thoughts off the top of my head: November 2015
It is raining again!!! This has been a wet year for us, long periods of cloudy weather and rain. Sometimes it has been showers and other times hours of tropical downpours. We are ten inches ahead for the year and there is another inch and a half in the rain gauge this morning. We have had 25-30% more rain than normal, pretty much spread out evenly over the year.
You all probably know that an El Nino weather pattern is predicted for this winter. The belly button of the Pacific Ocean where they measure such things has warmed again and the forecast is for a wet winter on the West Coast. Landslides on hills ravaged by this summer’s fires will soon fill the hours of CNN. (Mud sweeping over houses and cars makes such good television.)
For us in the Southeast, El Nino is a rain producer also. The storms that swamp California head south to the Gulf of Mexico, refill their rain clouds and then head northeast. Usually they bring warm temperatures and rain with them but if we have an outbreak of artic air in place it might mean the dreaded wintery mix. Snow in Virginia, rain along the coast and who knows what here. Often we have rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow all from the same event. Oh boy!
We all complain about the rain, I think mostly because modern humans do not like to get wet unless they are in the shower or at the beach, but we want the rain too. Our hostas don’t mind getting wet and they love the rain. In fact they usually need more water than our normal annual rainfall will supply, especially if there are extended gaps between soaking showers. So we as gardeners are invariably in the irrigation business.
While all of us can tell when the garden gets “dry” and it is time to drag out the hoses and sprinklers, (or if you are fortunate, turn on the irrigation system), most of us are not very scientific about it. In fact, we probably wait too long to turn on the spigot and once the soil gets really dry it is hard to get it moist again, Mother Nature can fool you. Three cloudy days of light rain may only suffice in getting the dust off your hosta leaves with very little getting to the soil. A hard rain followed by a windy day may dry the garden overnight.
I try to be a least a little scientific about it. I do after all have a scientist’s brain. So I have a rain gauge. It is a big one with large print numbers that I can read from my bedroom window. Sometimes I’m amazed how much it can rain in 30 minutes, an inch or more, and how little in a whole day. Sometimes I think the gauge must have a crack in it or the hummingbirds are drinking from it, but I know they really can’t. The point is that numbers do not lie, data are data. It helps take the guesswork out of it. If it is empty then it must be time to water.
You know all this. But how much water do your hostas really need and how much does Mother Nature supply on average? The short answer to the first part of the question in my opinion is that you cannot water your hostas too much from a hose. But for a more “scientific” solution let’s visit the homeland of hostas, Japan. We could visit other Asian locales where hostas live also but one trip is all the space we can spare today.
I will then you take on a whirlwind tour of three cities in three regions of Japan. First, we fly into Tokyo on the central east coast of Honshu, the home of H. montana, H. longipes,and H. sieboldii. The average annual rainfall there is 55 inches, wet summers and dry winters. Taking the train south to the region near Kyoto, where you can find a variety of forms of H. kikutii, we find a warmer, wetter climate and 62 inches of rain on average per year. Finally, let’s head up the west coast to the northwest corner of Honshu along the South China Sea to Akita. Here is the home of H. sieboldiana we believe and we find a cold, very wet climate with 69 inches of rain per year.
On the long plane ride home you start to wonder, “What is my average annual rainfall?” On your smartphone using the plane’s Wi-Fi you can visit www.climate-zone.com and find the city nearest to you. Also, the National Weather Service has more data than you could possibly want unless of course you are really a weather geek. For me it is 42 inches more or less. Even with the extra 10 inches we have had this year, this is the third wettest year so far, we are still three inches behind Tokyo’s average, and an unbelievable 17 inches behind Akita.
This makes me start to understand why it is hard to grow hostas in my neighborhood without at least some irrigation. Of course, temperature has something to do with it too. Japan is generally cooler than North Carolina. We could now compare average temperatures, the temperature extremes, and the days over 90 degrees, here and there, but that is for another day. My head is starting to spin. Let’s just make it a homework assignment for a rainy day.
‘Blue Mouse Ears’ has revolutionized the hosta world and fueled the modern mini craze. There are maybe 50 “mice” infesting gardens worldwide and surely more soon to come. Mice are like that. Everyone thinks they are cute, well so are baby deer, but everything has its dark side.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am all on board with the mini craze but I do not collect “mice”. I do sell them, however, and they sell very well. But just like the furry ones that like to nibble in my pantry, I’m getting a little annoyed with them.
We all know why we like “mice”. Yes, they are cute, making their tight mounds of almost perfectly round mouse ear leaves. And unlike the mammals, they stay where you put them. They are perfect for containers, from small troughs to bowls to designer pots. They can live on your deck, your porch or in the garden. Even their short scapes and lavender flowers are perfectly attractive. In bloom they could be the perfect potted plant that you receive in the hospital as you recover from knee replacement surgery, a common bane of diggers in the dirt.
So, given all this wonderfulness, it may sound strange but I don’t like mice. Yes, I admit they are cute but not in a normal way. ‘Pandora’s Box’, ‘Dragon Tails’ and ‘Cracker Crumbs’ are cute and look like big hostas, just tiny. ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ looks a little Frankensteinish to me, like it was put together in a lab and then electrified. In fact, that might not be so far from the truth, we just have not identified the mad scientist that created it as of yet. It must have escaped from the lab on its own, hiding in a flat of ‘Blue Cadet’.
First, we thought it was produced by one of those change of ploidy tricks for which hostas are now famous but it turns out that it has the usually default two sets of chromosomes, it is diploid, 2-2-2. The whole plant is reduced and thickened, leaves, petioles, scapes and flowers. It appears to have some nuclear genetic mutation or mutations since these traits can be passed along to its children. I call it a dwarfing gene, but I really do not know what to call it. Maybe it was electrified. I have seen something similar to this before in ‘Gold Drop’ and ‘Appletini’ where slow growing dwarf forms were produced, only they lacked the mouse ear appeal and found the compost pile.
Personal taste alone, of which mine I admit is not mainstream, is not a very justifiable reason for hating, oops, I mean disliking, mice. I know they have great commercial value and so I have invited hundreds and hundreds of them into my nursery hoping that they would multiply and subdue the Earth. ‘Blue Cadet’ does, but these mice do not multiply like, well mice should. ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ is slower than ‘Blue Cadet’ and the other mice are even worse. This is annoying but that’s why there is tissue culture.
It turns out that they are also slow coming out of tissue culture. Part of this is that they are short season hostas. They make a set of leaves maybe two and want to bloom right away in June and then take a nice long winter’s nap by July. ‘Blue Cadet’ with all its vigor often throws up a second set of shoots in late summer but not the mice; they just sit there. I guess they are fat and happy but hosta leaves that are not very active are also not proficient at protecting themselves from disease. So by August they get a little rusty. (Maybe the mad scientist made them bionic with iron prostheses, maybe not.)
Okay, so they don’t look so great in late summer and maybe they could grow a little better but they are dwarfs after all. You got me there. The real reason that I hate “mice” is that they misbehave! Yes, they sport. At first we thought this was a good thing and many of you still do.
First, they sported in the normal variegated way. Streaky ‘Royal Mouse Ears’ “stabilized” into ‘Frosted Mouse Ears’ and ‘Holy Mouse Ears’. Then, from seemingly a million different corners of the globe other variegated sports appeared, some different, some the same. Suddenly names of “mice” were multiplying like crazy and many of you wanted them all. Mouse mania had begun and hosta growers tried to fill the demand. (It is interesting that there are very few examples of variegated ‘Blue Cadet’ sports, by the way.)
But as easily as these mice became variegated they became something else. Sometimes all blue but more often just a mess, a mouse mess! Light-centered forms are the worst, sporting back to solid colored plants often the first year, e.g. ‘Cat and Mouse’. True plants become a rarity in the nursery. Some have sold these variegated off types as streaked forms but really they are just random collections of variegation partially here and not so much there. Yes, they are a mess, often permanently.
Further, mouse variegation is not consistent even throughout the growing season. ‘Holy Mouse Ears’ emerges with a light green center which will later turn white, ‘Mousetrap’ emerges white in in the center with a few green flecks but becomes all green by August. The latter is actually preferable. Green plants grow better than white plants and do not melt. Some bordered forms emerge yellow and become white, and some green then white, others white then green. No, not all bordered mice are the same.
Then some mice really misbehave. How do you explain ‘Green Mouse Ears’? Yes, we have seen blue hostas before lose their ability to make wax in tissue culture before especially with ‘Halcyon’ but ‘Green Mouse Ears’ is not just green ‘Blue Mouse Ears’. It is more dwarf, more broken. What is going on here? Its variegated sports are equally unstable and frequently become almost all green.
And what about all those ruffled mice? What a mess. Their margins have changed into fast growing tissue again, thus causing the ruffling and dancing. Are they trying to break out of the grip of their Frankensteination? Yes, that margin sports too, forming much larger, fast growing blue or yellow hostas that resemble ‘Blue Cadet’ but are not quite ‘Blue Cadet’. Many have been given “rat” names. I really detest rats!!!
Now there are also hybrid mice. Like their parents some grow, some are slow. Some have cute leaves, some not so much. There are yellow ones that turn green, blue ones with cool lighter venation. So here we go again. I’m sure another round of mouse sports is on the way.
Okay, I am going to exhale now. I know this all sounds like I might be losing it a little, maybe a lot. Do I really hate mice? Probably not, I just need a little more consistency in my life. By the way I have this new variegated sport of ‘Solar Mouse’…