You have had the painful year. Didn't you also lose most of your photos when a hard drive failed?

I only have a few eyes peeking out, which is a good thing. We still have a couple below freezing nights in the forecast. Last night was 25 degrees, and I thought I'd covered everything, but discovered Diana Remembers had broken ground. Amazingly, there's no sign of damage.

I'm waiting to see if Korean Snow, Sugar Daddy, and Jewel of the Nile made it. They all had one eye and only a couple leaves last year. Eskimo Pie looked pretty sad, too. The only one I'd replace would be Korean Snow. It at least had the excuse of being eaten twice. The others just never thrived.

Little Treasure was a nice surprise. I bought it late last year and planted it in a rotted out tree stump. Today I discovered it has twice the eyes it did last fall! Also looking forward to seeing Kikuferin Ko Mame (probably butchered the spelling). Like your Tiny Tears, it's sooooo small. The name means something like tiny pea pod.

MadPlanter, right you are about the hard drive failure! That was a big loss of all that history....owwwwwweee. I'm wondering about sending it to one of those places for salvage.

I've heard about Little Treasure, don't remember exactly what, but it was favorable.

And, I discovered the Eskimo Pie that has been hanging in there since 2010, pulled it out of its pot to discover it was barely alive with one tiny piece of crown and about 4 roots hanging with it. That is my experimental triage with a new pot, new soil, a special ICU set up for it. I'll give it a chance, but won't replace it. After all, White Elephant is less of a problem for me, and I have enough problems w/o taking on more.

I have separated my Sugar Daddy into two pots to test it in shade and a lot more sun. It is said to be not-so-great, but with a name like that I want to give it a chance. I mean, I have Rich Uncle and always wanted a Sugar Daddy.

If your Jewel of The Nile doesn't make it, think about a Key Lime Pie.....there is a thread active right now related to a mistaken identity involving those two. Great photos too.

Sorry for your losses Mocc! I have no losses at all here,except Winter Snow still hasn't appeared,but I will keep an eye out for it. All other hostas are doing very well,in fact it looks to be a great year,even though late spring hasn't been very nice. We got almost an inch of rain with the latest cold front,and now it is cool again,but now dangerous to the plants. Phil

I lost Magic Fire, but he was hurtin' last year too. Thunderbolt is a 1" leaf again this year. May dump him. Each year you will probably lose a few, but you will learn from your mistakes and the number will lessen as the years progress. If you really love a hosta, give it at least 3 tries.

Sometimes it is critters, and sometimes it is just circumstance. I thought I could do no wrong with hostas in my early years. But after 3 years we had a "normal" rainy season and I lost almost 1/2 of them. Dispair! Then I put a tarp over them during our Winter rainy season. Tah Dah!

Hostas are a real learning experience, and I'm sure you will discover what works for you under your very special conditions.

If they were easy to grow in southern Alabama, they would be in every yard. Take notes on the weather (unusually wet or cold or buggy) so you can look back and see what happened. Some things you can control (critters) and some you can't...like a summer hailstorm.

Regarding the hard drive crash. I SO sympathize. I print out little wallet sized photos that go into a binder each year (you call them "school photos") and I write the number of eyes or if I divided it. I have nothing from 2005-6. We had family stuff going on and I never did a print out or back up. Then the drive crashed.

Yes, hostas are a real learning experience! But a very rewarding one.

-Babka

That would be terrible to lose all your pictures Moc So far most of my plants have not winter killed but still a few that have not poked up yet so time will tell. Sorry for your losses fo such great plants.

I like the idea of the wallet size prints Babka. Another thing that works for me is doing up a dvd with all your hosta pictures and just stashing it away. I made one up until last fall but so far never made another . Hopefully computer doesn't die but Myrle's husband is a computer repairman if I have any trouble( another of our trade deals between my husband and Mike). I don't know if they can be found in the crashed harddrive or if they are just gone for good. One other thing is an external hard drive just for your pictures and then they can be updated and stored in that. I keep my pictures and music in the external drive and it keeps the computer clean and working faster.
Faye

I just piped in a new system at my plant where we work off the server no hard drive in some areas anymore. Just working in the Cloud. Scary to me. Mocc I back up my back-up. I learned the hard way too. I now have two 1TB external hard drives. When I save I save to both. It takes a little longer but not enough to worry about .I also do not have trust in the photo saving sites. I still feel they can be gone tomorrow or a charge somewhere for somethings.

I have no clue yet to any I may have lost. Spring is just around the corner still. You and bk are so far a head of me I was getting worried and un potting usually 1 a day to check for roots. A couple of deep breaths later I would be ok. There is something odd with Strip Tease tho. This was a just ok hosta when it got here but I believe it should be more than 1" high. lol Well I piped up a while ago and now I am happier to see them start to unfurl.

Keep a list of the loses and for the reason you thought it may have not have survived Ken's driveway as it will help track what does not work in the South. So far the Cathedral Windows, Holy Mole group is going strong. More will be reveled! Paula

Hi Mocc,

No losses to report yet; there are a heckuva lot of pips in my gardens, but still a lot have not shown yet. I'm hoping that is just because of the unseasonable cold here in northern Colorado, or simply my inexperience and rookie impatience to see all of them come up healthy. All of my fragrants are pipping except for 'Irish Luck' and 'The Shining', which is concerning, since they're reputed to be early risers. Resisting the urge to dig them up and check on 'em. Think I should?

I'll check back on your thread and let you know what's happening with the no-shows in the gardens soon.

Regards,
Don B.

Mocc, I'm sorry to hear about 'Stitch In Time'. That is a pricey Hosta, I know. If you lay down that kind of scratch for such a highly-touted variety, you shouldn't get a wimpy plant. I know you haven't had Hostas for a very long time, but you're obviously an experienced gardener. I highly doubt you killed it. Even if it's small, it should be at least a little robust, eh?

Don B.

Still getting freezes here Mocc. Hard to tell what may be lost or what is smart enough to lay low for another week or so.

Jon

Sorry to here about losses. It is interesting that as we branch out, try new things, we loose more. One might have thought that experience would have us loosing less.

So far I only know about the Red Alert because I went to check on it. If I try overwintering on the North side of my house again, I'll use some chicken wire for protection. I'll also cover it with something for extra insulation. I also checked on a Abba Dabba Do I bought by mistake (another story). Because I really didn't plan for it, I put it in the liner of our old washing machine (big tub). The squirrels have been in there too. So it too may be a loss - I can live with that. "Learning Experience" indeed.

I hadn't though about replacing them yet.

Beverly

Fay, the external USB hard drive was the one which failed. I thought as you did, that I'd put them all there and have more control over it. I had gone through the difficulties of my Windows 7 computer denying me access to the pictures while they were on my computer, even though my account was of course the only blasted one there, and of COURSE I was the ADMINISTRATOR.
So after that fiasco, I pulled them off the computer and put them on the WD Ambassador 1.5T (1500 gigabyte) external USB harddrive. That was the drive where I also had my backups, the optical image of my computer as well.

What I did not figure on what that Western Digital (WD) Ambassador drives were not manufactured by themselves but were "no-name" stuff that were well known in the industry to have frequent failures. No wonder they were cheaper than others. And that information I learned from the online links from Tim Fisher on About.com where he featured services which could possibly salvage data--FOR A PRICE. The cost depends on how delicately they must access the failed drive. Of course it is possible to TRY. I still have the drive in its original box waiting until I decide if it is worth the gamble. I mean, I could use that $500 to $1400 estimate on the house remodel, or on the garden. Why the wide estimate range? Because the bloomin hard drive could be a total mess, or one that is not so bad. If they cannot get anything, then I believe it is no charge. But they need it in hand to even guess. In my hands, it is a BRICK.

So if you have all your eggs in one basket, I suggest putting your pictures on a DVD and checking it to be sure it plays. Making two copies might be fine. I know I had several CDs of pictures from MoccasinLanding, before I began hosta gardening, and they may be in storage somewhere. Having homes in two locations, moving, storing for a remodel, it is so hard to keep track of stuff.

At this point, I am trying out a cloud storage for the photos off my Android tablet. The problem with that, I have yet to discover how to get the tags for identification on each shot before they are automatically uploaded to the cloud.

Worth noting what Paula says:
Keep a list of the loses and for the reason you thought it may have not have survived Ken's driveway as it will help track what does not work in the South. So far the Cathedral Windows, Holy Mole group is going strong. More will be reveled! Paula

Sure thing, Paula.
It is worth keeping an eye on the possibility that I protected some TOO WELL from any moisture over the winter, when we warmed up and they could not access moisture. I'll have to check again to see what I tumped out and found to be not dry, which I think was Eskimo Pie, there was a rock in the bottom of the pot, it was dug up from the ground in MA, and I never repotted it. So there was a lot of moisture with him. He is not totally dead YET, just very very diminished and on its last little bit of energy.

It is awesome to see how the desire to live is in the very least bit of tissue, isn't it?

Mocc,

Maybe you can find a place that can recover your photos. I leave mine on the main computer, back up to an external hard drive, and copy to DVD as well. The only problem is getting it done; I tend to let 2-4 months go by unless the pictures are something important.

Maybe Eskimo Pie is just a fussy hosta. I'll have to look at Key Lime Pie. Jewel of the Nile is turning into Dee's Golden Jewel, what there is of it.

Wow, see if you can find someone local who can give you an estimate on that drive. Did you try it on other computers? It almost never works, but it might.

I can sympathize on the photos. I'm a genealogy nut, so had tons of copies of old photos. This was several years ago, and my I lost a bunch of my photos and thought that they were safely backed up to floppies, so it was a year or so later that I tried the floppies. 75% of them failed. I'm know better about backing up my photos, though. They say you should store all your photos on your computer and back them up with each new technology.

Most of my hosta losses are due to Cleo. But, not all. I finally lost my Venus, which was fried in shipping in fall 2011, then spent 2012 with juvenile leaves looking pitiful. Then in 2013, it didn't return. I've had some "setbacks", though. I think the potting soil I made was too dense, so with the warm, wet, cold, dry (and back again) weather, some are limping. Some nice warm days sure would help.

bk

Today I discovered a problem with Fried Green Tomatos. Since it could be a virus, tomorrow it gets a test all by itself. I'm afraid it might be a tobacco virus and not show up with the HVX strip.
I'll take pictures of it to upload in a separate thread. As far as I could tell, it looked like three leaves had a mosaic sort of pattern on them, slightly darker than the main green of the rest of the plant.

Of course, it is isolated where I won't touch it even accidentally. Bummer, really, it emerged so big and pretty this year.

I have pips for everything except my 2 'Paul's Glory' and my 'Fluted Fountain'!! (90 varieties total). Dodging bullets so far...Chomping at the bit for my mail-order additions!

Don B.

I am counting my losses too. Near Birmingham, Alabama and such a mild winter, many of my hostas have come up very small, and I also voles which I can't get rid of. Very disappointing; I feel your pain. :(

Hi, J4 in B'ham!
You have voles. I wonder if WE have voles this far south?
I was told we did not have them, so what stops the little critters from invading the Gulf? All our snakes and owls?

Glad to see you monitoring the Hosta Forum.