Established plants that are hardy in our climate should not need any protection. This includes winter sown* seed. The only exception would be if we have an unusually long warm period followed by an unusually late frost, like a few years ago. This occurs very rarely and shouldn't be a source of concern most years.

I've never heard of having to protect hostas like you describe. I certainly have never had to do that with any of mine. I have multiple hostas in both average shade and very light shade and in different types of soil, but never provided any type of frost protection.

* For more information on winter sown seed, see the Winter Sowing Forum. Not all seeds are recommended for winter sowing.

I've never had to cover any perennials...as Brandon said, if they are hardy in this climate they should be fine. The one thing I have had to cover over the years are tulips if they are in bloom and it freezes. If they are just coming up or even in bud, they do fine.

I started buying only mid-season tulips and have *mostly* solved that problem :)

Yeah, Brandon is right...a couple of years ago we had a weird, off-season frost pretty late, plus a lot of unusually warm weather before the frost. The warm weather had encouraged a lot of trees to leaf out that wouldn't normally have done so that early (it was Crape myrtles and Japanese Maple for me). The tender leaves got bitten by the frost, and some young trees couldn't recover. Mine took a hit, but they were pretty established so I didn't lose any.

Ok, thanks. My hostas got it and they were fairly established--but it was April so probably falls into the pattern of sustained warmth/cold that you describe. I'm just gonna give it a go then and see what happens. I don't have much up but having spent our two warm days weeding and getting excited at what's coming up, I didn't want the rug pulled out from under me.

Thanks, all.