The Hosta damage is often from slugs. Pour some ammonia in a spray bottle and squirt the leaves. The amonia has nitrogen and the plants will actually like it, the slugs won't. I get slugs attacking my roses now and then, I buy a spray for them, I can't see spraying my roses with ammonia.
As to the chewed up plant stalks..
I saw over in another section of the Garden web where someone had the same kind of problem and posted pictures of the damage. It was a few weeks ago that I saw it. You can try checking out the section about plant diseases or whatever its called.

Girls,

Slugs feed at night, so you should be able to catch them in the act by going out in the dark with a flashlight. If you see any on your plants, you might want to pick them off into some kind of container to dispose of them. They won't hurt you if you just hand pick them but, if you prefer, you could use large tweezers, tongs, or something like that.

If you have a lot of slugs you can reduce their population with a commercial product like Sluggo, which contains a non-toxic iron phosphate formula that actually acts as a fertilizer to your plants. I prefer not to use the metaldehyde-based slug killers because they are somewhat toxic.

Slugs don't like to crawl on sand, so if you mulch around your plants with some sand that will discourage them from crawling in that immediate area. Dry sand also discourages pill bugs, who require a moist environment.

MM