They are all nice varieties of hosta, unfortunately hosta do not come true from seeds. Almost any seeds you plant will yield 95% all green babies with 5% being either blue or gold. I think the chance of getting a varigated seedling are really slim - somthing like 1 in 1000?

If you have seeds from a streaked plant the odds of getting a varigated seedling go up considerably.

Of the plants you mentioned, some are readily available and would not be too expensive. Dancing in the Rain, Montana Aureomarginata, Night Before Christmas, Pineapple Upsidedown Cake should all be comparatively cheap.

Cherry Berry and Island Charm (to some extent) tend to be a little finicky and can be tougher to grow than most hostas. I'm not saying you can't grow them, just that they are not as resiliant and easy as many of the other varieties.

I do not grow GOlden Tusk or Brother Stefan so I can't comment on them. I do ahve JOTN and Orange Marmalade, but they wre new last year so I do not know how they fared over the winter yet.

Good Luck and welcome!

Alexa

agree 100% ...

hosta mail order very well .... check old posts or ask in a new post for recomended suppliers .... naylor creek or hallston's come readily to mind ... both are on the web .. i think ....

ken

If you are new to hosta another good place to get them is White Oak Nursery. I just looked at their site and they have Montana Aureo for $6.

Good Luck,
Teresa

Here is a link that might be useful: White Oak Nursery

If you wanted to grow from seed just for the fun of it like I do, Homestead Hosta.com. That is where I buy my seed every year and I have great germination rates. I'm up to my ears in babies right now! I know most of them will be plain janes, but I don't care I just like to watch them grow. I guess when I fill my own yard up I will start on somebody else's!

Hello everybody. I am new to this forum (I think... it's hard to remember where I've been ;-]).

I understand not getting the coloration true from seed, but what about the form and/or other characteristics? I would really like Abiqua Drinking Gourd hosta for its size, texture, visual interest, and slug-resistance (*especially* for slug resistance) and probably others for that slug resistance as well. ADG is a solid-colored hosta. Could I possibly get ADG to grow true from seed, if I can get seed of ADG? What about others that are not variegated or flashy-colors, but slug-resistant?

I have some seed and other things to swap, but not the kind of money the nurseries are asking for the plants!

Thanks in advance for any information. I appreciate what I'm learning from y'all!

Terri

The chances of getting an exact duplicate even of Abiqua Drinking Gourd is slim. Color isn't the only characteristic to consider as size and form also will vary. You would probably get some nice thick leaves from ADG seed, maybe not as blue, though.

For variegated hostas the general rule of thumb is that the seedlings will tend to match the center coloration. So a hosta that is gold in the middle with green edges will usually have gold seedlings. A hosta like Island Charm with a white center will often have white seedlings that will die from the lack of chlorophyll.

As has been mentioned, if you want named plants the only way is to buy the plants.

Thanks for the response, ctopher. The color isn't as big a deal to me as much as the structure and the resistance to slugs - thanks to some ancient slug pellets I had in the garage, the slugs didn't eat all of my little hostas last year (though they sure tried), and I guess I'd rather find hostas that don't attract the varmints, rather than spend much time trying to protect the plants (I'm very big into self-sufficient plants and avoiding chemicals *when possible*).

So I will go through the list of slug-resistant hostas and see if I can find seed for those, and maybe get something going that way. If not, c'est la vie. :-)

I had to clean-up my desk - no an easy task! But I found seeds from my Abiqua Drinking Gourd. If you'd like to have them, send me your address.
Pam

Emailed you, Pam - thank you! :-)