Sadly, there is no one secret or 'fix all' magic bullet because all our gardens are their own little microenvironment and ecosystem. Saying that, I will share with you every aspect of how I grow hostas, which certainly seems to work here. But where are we talking about first? My garden is in South Oxfordshire, England. It's a maritime USDA zone 8b equivalent. My hostas are all in pots, placed on a table, or are in large planters on the ground, tucked under a north-facing gable-end... on a stone terrace. 

Why am I telling you this? Well, it's a particularly dry area of the garden. The north-facing site is sheltered from the predominantly westerly rain. The terrace is open with few hiding places for the slugs and snails. This all helps!

Worth mentioning...

As for barriers and obstacles, I have tried wool pellets once, when my hostas were growing in the borders of the Cottage Garden. It was a stupendous failure. The slugs and snails made themselves at home under the moist and warm wool, only to appear at night and literally shred the hostas! A total waste of time and money.

As for barriers and obstacles, I tried wool pellets once when my hostas were in the ground. It was a stupendous failure with the slugs and snails making a home under the moist and warm wool, only to appear at night and literally shred the hostas!!! A total waste of time and money. 

I’ve never used copper tape. Nor 'protective mulches' like eggs shells, coffee, grit, or anything like that. The RHS ran a trial testing 'mulches' in combination with pellets and the mulches actually increased the damage. You could try beer traps, but then you’re attracting slugs to your hostas, so maybe not a great move either. In my experience, nematodes have been effective in the Kitchen Garden, but they do need several applications through the growing season. 

So what do I do?

Right, I have set the scene. Now, on with my hosta show and tell… I am careful with cultivar selection. I tend to grow the glaucous cultivars with thicker, less palatable leaves. I think this is a critical attribute. Halcyon, Blue Angel, Bressingham Blue, Mouse Ears all lie within this category.

Fundamentally, there are only a few things I do:

1. Grow strong, healthy hostas
2. Water regularly
3. Prune out flower stems
4. Divide congested clumps
5. Encourage as many slug/snail eating garden friends as I can!

Grow them strong!

Every year, in late winter, the Hostas are assessed and redressed. This is my process when I see those first hard shoots just nosing through the compost:

• Lift the pot, or roll it on its side, check there are no slugs or snails hiding in the drainage holes! They are cunning little blighters and will happily overwinter and hibernate in the gap between the base of the pot and the crock inside. But not before laying eggs in the compost above…Clever!
• Run a hand fork or daisy grubber around the inside of the pot rim to dislodge any slugs or baby snails hiding under the compost/soil surface.
• Remove any weeds, moss and detritus lying on the surface and by doing so I'm removing potential cover.
• With a clean surface, I apply a single dose of Fish-Blood-Bonemeal, followed by a fresh layer of good quality bark-based compost. Water this in to settle it down.

It doesn't seem like much, but we have done two important things here. We’ve removed any existing slugs or snails from the pot. And we’ve given the hosta a dose of fertiliser, so it will grow strong and quickly, producing tougher, healthy foliage that does not lag or linger.

The only thing thereafter is regular watering, after the leaves begin to unfurl. A real soaking usually once per week, rain or shine. Crucially, watering is always completed in the mornings, so surfaces are dry by nightfall, making it harder (and far more energy draining) for those malevolent molluscs to go marauding through your plants. Why make it easier for them?

With that initial feed, and regular water, hostas will grow fast. When plants are stressed, whether it’s lack of water or nutrients, the first thing to suffer are the leaves. Stressed leaves are vulnerable. Molluscs detect these weak leaves and home in like laser-guided slimy torpedoes. If you have yellowing leaves, remove them immediately.

Keep that fine foliage!

In June, hostas throw up tall flower spikes or 'scapes'. After pollination, the plant’s natural reproductive cycle is complete and the plant naturally begins to wind down. Essentially, its job is done for the year - metaphorically claps its hands and says “Goodnight!” The leaves begin to lose colour, shape, and that particular lushness we so adore. 

So, be brave and prune out those flower stems! I’m not a huge fan of them anyway and I’ve given the bees and other pollinators a 1/3rd of an acre of flowers already. Removing the flowers before they open helps maintain the hosta’s vigour and the leaves stay looking better for longer. They will continue to throw up new stems, but keep pruning them out. Should you wish to, you can give your hostas a regular seaweed feed, but I haven't found this necessary.

Winter Tidy

Eventually, like all herbaceous plants, leaves wither and die. In November, when the leaves are all yellowing and reduced to a semi-translucent mush, cut them right down to the ground. Don’t leave even so much as a wisp of leaf. You can twist and pull leaves out like you would rhubarb, but I find this often leaves a tear and ragged ends. I prefer to cut! By doing this, you’ll already be one step ahead by spring. Removing the leaves, removes any potential food and, crucially, cover for those slimy soil dwellers.

Over the winter, without cover of fallen leaves, the eggs are subjected to hard frosts and birds will be able to pick over the surface, scouring for those pearly spheres. Don’t complain that the birds are making a mess. You can sweep and wash it all away in spring. By the time next spring arrives, you’ll already have fewer slugs and snails.

Fun fact: Ground beetles devour slug eggs, which is yet another reason to have a healthy balanced garden! I mentioned the birds before. I feed blackbirds and thrushes mealworms and suet pellets. They rear lots of young and the population increases… all hungry for moist and meaty molluscs.

Divide and thrive!

Even if you do all the above and your hostas look majestic and magical in their pots, eventually they will still become stressed. It might sound obvious, but pots have a finite capacity for roots. Essentially, pot-bound plants can't find enough food and/or water to sustain the growth above. No matter how much you water or feed them, the plants are lacklustre and weak. In extreme cases, there's actually more root than compost!

Most of my larger hostas, like Halcyon and Bressingham Blue, are in pots measuring 40cm across. In late winter 2022, these hostas were removed from their pots, unceremoniously plonked on the paving, then brutally chopped up with a spade. It was simple and effective. Don't worry. These are TOUGH plants! Now, the subsequent divisions have already filled their new pots with stems emerging edge to edge, so they need dividing yet again. On the plus side, it means free plants (and what self-respecting gardener doesn't like free plants?!) but on the downside it means paying for more pots.

Technically, you could also 'root prune' which involves the same process, but instead of cutting vertically through the plant, you cut horizontally across and through the roots. But why bother when you can make new plants? Even if it means the divisions live in recycled plastic pots.

And a quick word on pots... many ceramics have a bowl shape that pinches-in, a little way below the rim. This design 'flaw' can be really inconvenient when it comes to removing a plant and might even mean you have to smash the pot to get the plant out. I swear it's a conspiracy to make us buy new pots! Bearing that in mind, look for straight-sided pots or bowls without that annoying pinch point.

Garden friends

In my garden, there are lots of birds and I go out of my way to encourage them. Blackbirds, Song Thrush, and Starlings are all voracious predators of slugs and snails. I often hear a sharp tapping when I'm in the garden. When I locate the source, it's often a blackbird or song thrush smashing the life (literally) out of a snail. Frogs, toads, slow worms, ground beetles are all particularly fond of a meaty mollusk!

To encourage the birds, I feed them on makeshift bird tables (near the hostas) as they're happiest feeding on the ground, or at least a flat surface, as opposed to hanging on a bird feeder. But, importantly, I only feed in the morning and they spend the rest of the day scouring the garden borders, beds, and pots for food, doing a marvellous job of controlling would-be pests in the process.

We have lots of frogs but no actual pond (yet). I do have a large area of uncultivated wild and weedy habitat - The Embankment - and it is here I find the most frogs. A close second, in frog numbers, is the Flower Garden, even though it's a dry and sunny spot. But the dense covering of plants provides both shade and moisture at ground level, where they happily shelter during the day. Note: Frogs generally only visit water during the breeding season.

Organic gardening methods enable a good balance of both predator and pest. All the gardens are 'no dig' and there are no chemicals, so the soil is healthy and alive. There are also lots of twiggy piles, log piles, and other places of cover. The result is a very healthy population of slug and snail eating beetles including::

• Lesser Stag Beetle (Dorcus parallelipipedus)
• Ground Beetle (Carabids)
• Devil's Coach-Horse Beetle (Ocypus olens
• Black snail beetle (Phosphuga atrata)