the hint he gave me 2 years ago was as you up cup remove the lowest set of leaves as they are smaller and kind of girdle the plant, seems to have worked wonders on ours and I have many that should go into gallon pots but at the moment dont have the room.

Girdle the plant...? What does this mean, whitewater?

here is the e-mail he sent me to explain the process.

Hi Deb, this will work on any seedling, but is particularly useful for
slower growing ones,

Get'n em gro'n

Is there anything slower growing than a 'Dorothy Benedict' seedling?

They get four or five tiny leaves up and just sit there.

I've found that removing the lowest leaves on a seedling at the first
sign
of being tired will speed up growth for most hosta seedlings; the next
in
line leaf will be bigger than the previous one until they reach some
maturity. Removing those lower leaves forces the seedling to compensate
by
putting up the next in line, a bigger one.

Some seedlings loose those first "seedling" leaves faster and start
putting
up bigger ones.

Dorothy B seedlings seem to hang on to them forever and they just sit
there.

Aggressive lower leaf removal will jump start these 'D.B's and put them
on
the road to putting weight on I did a study using 50 'DB'
seedlings.
Twenty five received vigorous lower leaf removal and the rest were left
natural. None of the natural seedlings matched the growth of the
pruned
ones. I am now removing lower leaves just BEFORE they look tired.
Good
growing practices still have to be maintained like light, porous
growing
medium, water etc. try it, chop chop !

Jim from the Hills

he also uses a serious light set up

i wonder how he removes them ... tearing.. or cutting?

ken

as serious about hostas as he is...maybe he gnaws them off. lol

You can peel the outermost leaves downward pretty easily, it is easiest while repotting to larger cups, because you can see what you are doing.
If not repotting, pull the outer leaves away from the center and down a bit and they usually will peel off. If it is too hard to pull them off, I usually leave them on and try again a few days later. Cutting the petioles should work also.
Dave