Digging Up The Hostas

This weekend we decided to get after the hostas on the side of the house.  When we replanted them years ago, there was a little bit of ground cover mixed in with them.  Don't ask me what it is, because I have no idea, and even Kris didn't know.  All we knew is that it was ground cover and it was taking over everything.  Half of the north side of the house had become overrun with it, so we decided it was time to rip it out.

What I thought would be a simple job that would last a couple of hours turned into a weekend-long project.  The big problem was making sure that I got the bulbs/roots out because I didn't want them coming back.  This proved to be way more difficult than I thought.  I ended up digging up half of the bed just to get it out, and then there were shoots that had intermingled with the hosta bulbs/roots, so then all the hosta had to come out too.

This actually turned out to be a good thing because just like the ground cover, the hostas had become overgrown to the point where they were pretty much out of control.  I didn't realize it until I got in and was getting the unwanted stuff out.  So I began digging up the root-balls of the clumps of hostas.  Then I found that the root system and spread out and attached to the weed barrier underneath, which resulted in essentially a "root carpet" over the entire bed.  OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was a lot.  So roots were cut, bulbs were split, and clumps were downsized.  I was also able to move the remaining hostas away from the house a little bit so that they are not interfering with the covers for the basement windows that go on the house for the winter.

Saturday was on the side of the house was actually much easier than the back of the house.  In the back, the ground cover had overgrown the hostas so much that it had choked out two banks of hostas altogether.  And while I exaggerated about the root rugs on the side of the house, I am not when it comes to the back.  I was ripping up sections of roots that were 3 feet wide and 6 feet long.

When all was said and done, I had 8 yard garbage bags full of cut ground cover and roots.  So that should tell you how bad it was.  And I have to say that I think everything looks much better now that it has been thinned out a little bit.  I thin we went down from nine clumps of hostas to five along the side of the house, and six clumps in the back.  I can't say how many were there when I started because some of the clumps had grown into one huge bank of leaves, and one area, as was already described, was gone because the ground cover had choked it out.  But it is so much more "clean" looking now.  I can't remember exactly when it was last done, but it has to be at least 10 years.  Hopefully I won't have to worry about it again for at least another 10 years.