DIVIDING POTBOUND HOSTAS

I would love to grow my hostas along the edge of the lawn but I know what would happen, that slugs and snails would attack them and leave them full of holes and looking dreadful, so I grow mine in large terracotta pots which are set on pot trolleys.  I also place sharp gravel around the base of my hostas.  The trouble with growing hostas in containers is that they will get potbound after a time, when the roots just have nowhere to go.  I even heard that the expansion of the roots can crack some containers.  So, yesterday I decided that it was time to divide my hosta Patriot as I could see it was pushing up leaf shoots even at the edge of the pot.  If you click on that link you will note that I had put off doing it for a year! 



Hosta Patriot

To get the hosta out of the terracotta container, without breaking the container,I cut around the edge of the soil, close to the pot, as deeply as I could (I use a long bread knife, like a saw.  That breadknife is really useful in the garden!  I even use if for edging around the lawn stepping stones).  Then I used the bread knife to deeply cut where I wanted to divide the hosta, avoiding the new shoots where I could.  Dividing doesn't harm the hosta, doing it this way.  You can tell by the roots that it's as tough as old boots.  I cut the hosta into four separate pieces.





Divided hosta Patriot

Now, the plan was that I would then gently coax out the dividing hosta using my garden fork, but that didn't work—I could tell I would crack the pot.  So I tipped the heavy pot carefully onto its side and the whole thing slid out.  Yes, some of the tips of the leaf shoots were damaged in the process, but I know that there will be more leaves to come and so I was happy enough.  At least the plant is divided and the pot is intact.  In fact, I now have two terracotta pots containing hosta Patriot; two new pieces in each.

Divided hosta Patriot

Divided and repotted hosta Patriot

Here is how I set about removing a potbound fern, Dryopteris filix-mas Euxinensis, from its terracotta pot.