Yes, it is because the snow will melt slowly when the temperature rises and you would only add the snow if the pots were dry.

See you knew this already! It is always good to confirm our thoughts though isn't it.

ooowwweeee.... 2 new topics .... hot spit ...

pots under snow .. are out of freeze drying winter winds .. in the cold north ...

think about chicken left in the freezer too long.. freezer burned ... imagine your hosta roots in an unprotected pot ...

soooo .. this part is not a watering issue ....

but a frozen solid pot ... which accumulates rain ... now or late winter.. early spring.. might not drain ... creating a giant pot sized ice cube ... and roots need air as much as water ... even more so when dormant ...

the simple thing to do.. is just tip over the pot so water cant accumulate ... which you cant do.. if you healed the pot into mother earth ...

AND TO BE CLEAR.. NEVER KICK A FROZEN POT ... unless you have steel toed boots on ... if they happen to be frozen to the ground.. you can break a toe ...

dormant hosta roots do not need to be upright ...

ken

Ok, I am processing it all. Too wet, freezing temperatures = ice cube. Ice cube filled with roots = roots unable to breathe = root rot. Unprotected roots in a pot = similar to freezer burned chicken! I think I'm going to remember that! LOL

Sounds like tipping over pots, maybe covering with leaves is something I should try one winter. I think with snow covering the pots, they wouldn't dry out that much (as compared to a garage or shed).

I did have success burying small pots (4 inch) last year. We didn't have the crazy wet fall we have this year. But come spring, we seem to get so much rain that I had to pull the pots out of the soil as soon as possible.

I never thought I would be worrying about my containers as much as I do! LOL

NOT. Those frozen roots don't need to breathe. They are dormant. Hosta crowns are like root veggies. Think of a carrot. If you freeze a carrot, in an air tight baggie, the moisture stays in the carrot, but if air gets to them, they dry out. Freezer burn happens when: (Wikipedia)

Freezer burn is a condition that occurs when frozen food has been damaged by dehydration and oxidation, due to air reaching the food. It is generally caused by food not being securely wrapped in air-tight packaging.

Hosta roots need to be kept cold and barely moist during dormancy.

-Babka

note the difference of opinion with a z9 peep ... and she being the potting queen ... she is not wrong ... but you dont garden in z9 ...

and i point this out.. simply to point out why a book can fail you ... if the author is only experienced in one zone .... and perhaps this is why you.. we ... get confused with how to do things .... we have a hard time localizing it to our garden ...

black pots.. in winter sun can warm during warmish winter spells ... even in our frigid zone .... and if you have a warmish week or so... they MIGHT break dormancy ....

you can bury them in mulch .. or various other things ... to remove direct sun on the pot ...

or you could just put them on the north side of the house ... under a conifer.. wherever they just dont get direct sun on the pot ...

as to frozen chicken ... babs need to stand outside when it 3 degrees ... with a 25 mph winter winds ... get a little wind burn on those cheeks... and then gets dry skin a few days later.. due to sunburn.. from sun reflected off of snow ... and wind burn from the wind ...

i have seen dead roots in spring.. and the roots look like they were freeze dried ... LOOK being the key word... as i am not enough of a chef to figure out.. if they truly were ... it was a word picture ... i think it works... but im not prepared to debate it in depth ...

ken

It really does vary according to your zone and conditions. Here in zone 8, I just leave my pots where they sit. They freeze occasionally and generally thaw in a day or two. If it rains, they get wet. They generally stay dormant until March, when the fragrants start to pip. Usually, I don't water them.

One year, we had an extremely dry winter. I went with the "ice cube" method of watering them, as everyone advised me not to water them.. I lost a bunch of hosta that year, especially the young ones. The roots completely dried out.

So, my suggestion is, don't necessarily follow advice from peeps from other environments. Also, conditions change from year to year. And unfortunately, experience is the best teacher. It would be so nice if we learned another way.

And, ken, Babka has experience with that face chapping dry wind. She's from the upper mid-west. She didn't always live in Silicon Valley.

bkay

while tooling around town.. i remembered that she had midwest roots ... or experience ...

ken

ps: gaining experience.. has cost me a lot of money over the years .... lol ....

Ken Ken Ken- Surely you jest. My formerly frostbitten fingers and toes will attest to my years of living and working in Chicago.

What we both are trying to explain is how dormant hosta roots (no matter where they are) need to be insulated from drying out too much or getting waterlogged. How you deal with that is different for every garden/location. I think Ken might have said they need air to breathe while dormant. (I don't agree with that). Frozen solid in rock hard Illinois soil where the frost line went down 3' they are like popsicles and they aren't doing much breathing.

Wondering... if a hosta (crown with roots) could be frozen submerged in a water filled zip lock bag then after 6 weeks, thawed and planted. aka hosta POPSICLE. Does anyone here have some extra seedling hostas to do that? You would have to do several, just in case one wasn't healthy to begin with.

Bkay- I had a hosta planted in some potting media that dried out and even though I flooded the pot and water ran fast out of the drain hole, it never remoistened. Couldn't figure out why the hosta kept wilting. I had to stir it up with a chopstick and water several times to re-wet it. I wonder if that is what happened when your "ice cube" hostas dried out?

-Babka

I think Ken might have said they need air to breathe while dormant. (I don't agree with that).

==>>>> i was pointing out.. that a POT could be very different that mother earth.. a variable introduced by the gardener... ergo.. must be considered by that peep ...

i used to buy those huge compressed bails of peat moss ... i insured they were bone dry.. if for no other reason... they couldnt be lifted otherwise .... i used to joke that i could probably float across the pond.. the atlantic to england ... the atlaltic drift and all that gives england a z9 .. go figure on that ... 2/3 of the way to the north pole ... but i digress ...

anyway ... i would break it up dry.. and incorporate it into the soil ... and i swear come back a year later ... and it was still dry gobs of peat ...

so i started wetting it in the bag .... blah.. blah ...

bottom line.. when peat goes bone dry.. it can become very water repellent.. and be very hard to rewet.. which is what babs probably ended up with ...

not to mention.. i lost a couple hundred smaller sized plants.. when i moved to this sand pit.. and just stuck pot sized gobs of media into native sand.. and by august.. the sand was wicking all the water out of the pot.. and a year or two later.. before i figured it out.. i had dry rotted hosta ,.. go figure ...

ken

Glad to see a healthy debate on this topic!

(1) I take away that I must remember that zone matters when overwintering pots.

(2) Best to keep overwintered pots from becoming waterlogged or too dry. Keep them out of the sun.

(3) When media becomes too dry, it may not be easily moistened. May also depend on what the media actually is(?).

(4) Frozen waterlogged hosta pots may actually survive---or may not. Experiment needed!

(5) Overwintering pots is completely different from overwintering in ground plants.

(6) A compressed bag of peat may actually help you travel cheaply.

(7) If you are an experienced gardener, you probably have lost a lot of plants!

as to 6 .... rotflmbo .... hope that translates into canadian ...

as to 7 ..... one of the definitions of a green thumb gardener.. is that you have killed every plant.. at least 3 times ... if you havent.. you arent trying hard enough ...

pretty good debate.. for chopped liver.. eh??? .. wheres the molson .. and .... is there a hockey game on tonight? [or maybe a curling rerun] ....

ken

Good list Newhostalady!!!! Conjures up all sorts of images.

Out here we sit on bags of alfalfa pellets, while drinking jugs of Gallo wine....waiting for the rainy season. It is late, Goodnight. ;-)

-Babka

Just adding my two cents of experience in 5a. My pots go in my unheated shed with foliage removed and ignored till spring. They get watered when I pull them out. Haven’t lost any yet.

I tried the pot tipping method, didn’t work for me, lost two hosta and didn’t want to try again.

Sherry

Thanks for chiming in Sherry. I love to hear other people's experiences.

I think if one is not sure whether to add moisture or not to a pot, best not to add it. Larger pots hold moisture for longer, and I never add snow or ice cubes to those. Smaller pots are a concern though. I have had losses due to the hosta being too dry, especially minis. I will be overwintering my hostas in five different locations around my house. I think some areas could be dryer than others---not sure. I will say though that container gardening is a challenge!

Yes, location and conditions play a huge part. It is a fine line between too wet and too dry going into winter.

Just moist is the way I like to see them go into winter. I have had to add snow to pots when they have dried out too much. Mice, voles can play havoc with unfrozen pots. I am much colder than you and when the deep freeze comes it usually stays but there are years that the pots freeze and thaw often. Those are the years that are a pain keeping the moisture just right. Since I know you get freeze/thaw cycles more often it makes it tricky for you most years.

I also know you have many fabulous specimens that you have successfully over wintered so you have certainly been adapting to your particular conditions.

Just to add to my comment, most of my potted hosta are in small ceramic pots 6”-8” in diameter, haven’t lost any with the above treatment.

Sherry

I overwinter only a few potted hostas..just like Sherry in an unheated shed and no water..I have small and large pots..so far so good..one thing to add..my media has minimal peat and no perlite..it looks like fine mulch..it seems to work well..my elephant ears are growing in it too..

go in my unheated shed with foliage removed and ignored till spring.

==>>> i have been rather successful with benign neglect ... lol ... its the converse of loving things to death with over-attention ...

us cold area peeps.. can water simply by putting an ice cube or snow ball on a pot in mid winter ... it just sits there until it warms a bit when it might actually moisten the soil ...

the alternative is a watering can.. and if the pot is frozen solid.. well.. we are back to creating that ice cube around the roots ... frozen chicken.. arguing with babs.. etc ....

its not really about the dormant plant needing water ... its about the media getting so dry;... it sucks moisture out of the dormant roots ...

ken

YES! Ken explained it perfectly!

"its not really about the dormant plant needing water ... its about the media getting so dry;... it sucks moisture out of the dormant roots ..."

When you you have a popsicle situation, the ice around the roots doesn't suck the moisture out of the roots. IQF (Individually quick frozen) shrimp, etc., don't dry out.

We ARE on the same page Ken!

-Babka

Peren.all, I agree it is a fine line between too wet and too dry going into winter. The end of the season is always tricky because it seems to rain a lot, the pots are wet and never really dry because of the cold temperatures. In addition, the squirrels are digging in the pots! So what I tend to do is start putting some of the pots into the homemade greenhouse. This shelters the pots from the squirrels and doesn't allow any more moisture in.

So now the pots that have been in the greenhouse are not wet, but maybe not moist either. Our temperatures for the next several days is just above freezing in the day and about the freezing point in the night. I don't know whether these pots are frozen. I suppose I should just unpot it and have a look. I think they may need more moisture before being put away for the winter. Decisions, decisions!

So at this point, half of my pots are put away in their winter resting place (window well). In this location, I cannot add any snow or moisture. My husband says there is more humidity in that location than, for example, the unheated garage. I have to hope for the best.

Nicholsworth, the media you use is a premade mix or your own?

Ken, so the media provides moisture to the roots. But everything changes when the media is too dry in winter.

newhostalady..a premade mix..it was called "raised bed" mix..the bag said it could be used in containers..there was a ripped bag and I saw the product..and liked the look of it..it's worked well so far..

Sounds good nicholsworth! I've seen raised bed soil being sold here. I will have to check it out next season.