undulata albomarginata ...

looks like drought.. for some reason the center of the crown is not getting enough water ...

2 inches at the edge is not a great deal of room for a plant that big ...

put it on the driveway .... use the car to break it in half. ... and then you will have two huge plants that will fit int he pots you have ...... how about a machete??? .. M80????

in my yard.. that is what summer dormancy looks like ... too hot.. too dry..

i do not see the southern blight ID there.. but that doesnt mean much

ken

Thanks, Ken.

Even I can't kill an undulata.

bkay

At first I was thinking the opposite of Ken - perhaps too much water - but in reality the plant is also very pot bound so it is probably not getting enough. Sunburn is an issue too with this one. Whenever Undulatas get stressed out the white portions turn green. I would recommend repotting this one into a larger container as it is probably seriously root bound.

Chris

Yup, classic pot-bound look . . .

hh

that plant does not need to be repotted.. i mean really when will it stop .. when the pot is bigger than the house???

it needs to be divided ... half that plant.. will fill the pot nearly the same as the whole.. w/o the drought issue ...

plants in the ground may NEVER need to be divided ... but that is not the same with a potted plant ...

ken

The problem is root rot, I think. When I dumped out the pot to cut it in half, it was REALLY wet. (We gad a rain/hail storm last night.) When I cut it in half, I realized it had almost no roots. I potted it up in two pots, put extra rocks in the bottom and took out the bark I had added when I repotted it this spring (thinking it would help drainage). Any other suggestions? Would a root stimulator help?

bkay

{{gwi:963640}}

...put extra rocks in the bottom...

That actually hurts drainage. Water flows through best when the media has similar sized particles right to the bottom.

tj

I'll preface that I'm new to hosta in pots - 2nd year. The link below helped me understand how water flows through containers - adding rocks to the bottom and removing bark will cause the reverse of what you are trying to accomplish -

From the link - "When we use a coarse drainage layer under our soil, it does not improve drainage. It does conserve on the volume of soil required to fill a pot and it makes the pot lighter. When we employ this exercise in an attempt to improve drainage, what we are actually doing is moving the level of the PWT(Perched Water Table) higher in the pot. This reduces available soil for roots to colonize, reduces total usable pot space, and limits potential for beneficial gas exchange. " Give the article a read, it's long but good.

Here is a pic of my container soil from last years pots - at least 50% bark/bark fines. And after reading the linked article, I'm changing to less peat and more bark.

Paul

Here is a link that might be useful: Container soils and water in containers

Thanks, Paul for the article. It took a few days to get where I could concentrate on it, but it seems to make sense.

Thanks again

bkay

That's how some of mine looked the year I lost a lot of them. I washed off all the soil and hand picked out all the rotted roots, then soaked what was left in a bucket with some bleach for about an hour. Repotted them in fresh bark/compost. If they have any white roots, they have a chance.

-Babka