Boo to very aggressive nasty tree roots! Your Fragrant Blue will bounce back and you won't be able to keep up to the pip count next spring. I'm going to try a few hostas in pots above ground. If I'm successful in overwintering then I'll score one for the good team (me) and zero for the bad guy (silver maple).

Did they come up thru the drain holes or over the top down? Your pics are a real eye opener! Good job of separating the two. Fragrant Blue will thank you.

-Babka

I'll bet it was totally gratifying to pry loose those tree roots! Great job, NHL - the hosta thanks you ... and those are nice sized pips! Beautiful pics and par for the course, of course.

The fluctuation in number of pips I chalk up to hosta putting on the beef. Sometimes numbers are secondary, depending on the circumstances, to larger leaves, fuller plant. My Ann Kulpa did something similar....just before she showed her maturity.

Good lesson to learn for all re the rotation of in-ground pots. Thank you so much for that important reminder! :-)

thanks for the educational post!

Don't feel bad. I've been planting in spin out bags, which are supposed to repel tree roots. Several hostas were shrinking. This spring I started digging things up and discovered a) The soil stays too wet over winter for some Hostas. Others thrive, so now it's a matter of getting all the unhappy ones into the ground. B) Some of the bags had been invaded by tree roots. They had gone through the seams or even straight through the fabric. Emerald Ruff Cut hadn't grown, and I thought it was just living up to its slow to grow reputation. Its bag was full of tree roots, and the soil was bone dry.

Anyhow, sometimes you can't win. All you can do is learn from the experience and try again. No bad hosta moms here! Your Fragrant Blue will live long and prosper.

Thanks Mae. Do try some pots to over winter. You will find it easier than you thought.

Thanks Babka. The roots came though the drainage holes. I try to put the top of the pot flush with the ground, and that helps to discourage roots from entering from the top. It's hard work to separate tree roots from hosta roots. Oh my back! But I will probably have to wait until next year to see the results.

Thanks Jo, and your right, I did get a lot of satisfaction prying out those roots! I agree with your comment about the growth in the number of pips not necessarily implying a problem. I guess one has to look at the total picture. Last year this Fragrant Blue did not look that great. Frost was partially to blame. Tree roots were the other problem! And maybe it was buried too deep? I can see the bottom of the shoots are white now from being buried.

Madplanter, I've got spin out bags too! Only thing is that I didn't have enough so I also used and use pots. Are you saying that your hosta in spin out bags are shrinking? And you have had roots going through the seams and even through the spin out fabric? Unbelievable! What kind of tree roots do you have, and how long have the hosta been in the spin out bags? Have you ever changed the media in the spin out bag after the initial planting? I hope you don't mind me asking these questions. I have often wondered how well a hosta (or other plant would do) in a spin out bag and for how long. I began using spin out bags in 2014. I hope that your ailing hostas will improve after being placed in the ground. Emerald Ruff Cut is such a beautiful hosta. After removing the tree roots, it must be recovering like my Fragrant Blue. Hopefully we both will be loving the way they look again.

I like the after pic as it looks smug sitting on a slice of dead tree!

You have reminded me that I need to do something about my FB as it is not happy either but its not roots, that can be tomorrow evenings job.

Thanks mountainy man. I think Fragrant Blue is saying "I'm finally free! And no tree roots can get me up here!" Hope your Fragrant Blue improves too. Then you and I can post our photos of Fragrant Blue in the Hosta Alphabet!

Hi, newhostalady. I've been using spin out bags for 3-4 years. Haven't changed the media, but they do get either Osmocote or 10-10-10 fertilizer after a year or two. They get planted in a mix of soil and compost. We've had rainy Autumn weather two years in a row, and several plants in bags have had the main eye die. They don't rot, but they get hollowed out. I could try adding fine bark, but decided to put them in the ground and dig around them every year instead. Some have to be dug out entirely to get rid of the roots. We live in a natural wooded area, so there are lots of different trees- cedar, ash, honey locusts, oak, ironwood, elm, hickory, walnut......

Another problem with the spin out bags is that the hosta's roots stick to the inside of the bag. From now on only struggling plants will get one.

Hope that helps.

I find spin out bags are great, but they do have their limitations. I can see from the list of trees that you are working with, that it is a challenging area. I was surprised to read that the tree roots had even gone through the bags! I can understand that the roots could go through the seams but through the bag---how dare they!!!!

It's no fun removing hosta from spin out bags and finding the roots stuck to the bag. I remember McTavish saying that she would plant hosta in a pot and then placed it in a spin out bag. I wonder how that worked out?

Yes spin-out bags have limitations with several tree species hickory (Carya) being one of them as shown in the disclaimer in attached photo.

Sorry John, I didn't see you had posted. I have never seen that notification before. I have Birch trees and Sugar Maple trees, so I guess I'm OK. Madplanter listed hickory as one of the trees on her property. Perhaps the roots of this kind of tree had gone into the spin out bag. All trees certainly are not created equal.

I certainly wouldn't recognize the Latin names for trees, nice to know they can't keep out Hickory; we have a lot of it.

It's odd how hostas react to the bags. I think I'm going to have to replace Alligator Shoes, which went from three big eyes to almost nothing - and the two leaves that it had got eaten. Rhino Hide barely grew for four years. I put it in a bag and it has more than doubled in size in two years. Too bad there's no easy way to tell which ones will love bags and which will fade away.

Wow---it had never occurred to me that some hostas would do better than others in the spin out bags. I think that most hostas that I have used them with have done well. The only one I wonder about is Queen of the Seas. I have one in a spin out bag and one in a pot. The one in the pot (which is one year younger, has done better than the older one in the spin out bag. Now you've got me thinking! LOL I wonder if the size of the bag has anything to do with it. Glad to hear that your Rhino Hide is making up for time lost!

So what happened to my potted Fragrant Blue the following year? So to recap the eye count went like this:

3(2012) 7(2013) 5(2014) 5(2015) 6(2016) and . . . . 22(2017)!!!!!!!!!

It loves me again! LOL

Wow, that one really loves you! You must be a very happy hosta mom now:-)

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the point of burying a plant in a pot? I have never heard of that!

So glad it's happy again, you too!

stir_fryi, you can bury a pot in the ground in order to block tree roots from entering the pot. But because the pot has drainage holes, the tree roots will eventually make their way into the pot. So it is important to actually rotate the pot periodically. And I forgot about doing that. Lesson learned. Also if you do an eye count in the spring as I do, then I should have become aware of the problem in 2014/2015. That's where the bad momma part comes in!