Hostas are an easy plant to propagate by dividing a plant into many more. To divide hostas:
- Dig up a healthy hosta that has spread out.
- Pull or cut the plant’s roots apart, so that each new plant has a crown and roots.
- Dig new holes for the divided plants.
- Add some bone meal or phosphorus fertilizer to each hole.
- Plant a divided hosta plant in each hole.
- Water each new hosta plant.
Watch the video above to find out more.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Julie Day Jones: Hostas are fun to divide because they kind of show you where to do it. You can see here that this will just pull off.
Storey Walters: And if you wanted to, this could be, like, six more.
Julie Day Jones: Sure.
Storey Walters: If you were a really patient person.
Julie Day Jones: If you want all the little babies. And you know sometimes when it’s really tight, I like to get just an old knife, and you can even cut it if it’s so matted that you can’t really tell where it would normally divide. That will help it.
Storey Walters: That’s probably a good idea.
Julie Day Jones: Just to kind of slice through and take one of them off. But sometimes you just can’t do it without breaking or cutting.
Storey Walters: And you almost feel like you’re hurting the plant, because you like saw through big major root things. But you know what, it’s kind of like when you take a plant out of the pot if you scar up the roots in the pot, like if it’s root-bound, it makes the plant kind of spread into the ground easier.
Julie Day Jones: Sure.
Storey Walters: And how do you just go in?
Julie Day Jones: Kind of in between two of the clumps. You get two crowns. You want to make sure…
Storey Walters: Sorry, I didn’t do that real well.
Julie Day Jones: Yeah, it’s fine. You just want to make sure that every plant has a crown, which is this little part here where it all comes out of the ground, so that you’re planting crowns. If you end up getting just a little leaf, that’s not going to grow.
Storey Walters: Right. Okay.
Julie Day Jones: I like to put a little bone meal or phosphorus in the hole. You can kind of see it on the bag here, the middle number is phosphorus, which tends to help with roots and root growth.
Storey Walters: Okay. Instead of promoting top growth right now.
Julie Day Jones: Right. And this is an organic bone meal, so putting a handful of this in the hole certainly can’t hurt. But after you divide something, sometimes it needs a little TLC to help those roots get going.
Storey Walters: Okay. Well, thank you.
Julie Day Jones: All right. Job well done.
Further Information
- When to Divide Hostas (article)
- How to Grow Hostas (article)
- Hosta Problems (article)
