How to divide hostas? How to keep away slugs?

Girly_girl

How does one divide hostas? I've never done it yet. My hostas are growing and they need space. Last year they were all eaten up by slugs! How do I stop that from happening? Do hostas like mulch? I'm planning on planting some in my from yard but I'm not to sure how to go about that. There's some grass, though not growing much in the shade I'd like to plant hostas especially alongside the pathway. What do I do that exactly if I want to succeed?
Thanks for your time!

Tom Struble

http://www.americanhostasociety.org/....php?f=2&t=104

creeper

Girly:
Hostas are a great choice with a ton of different variety and they all look good together. They are very hardy and suffer neglect well. Except slugs do like to chew on them.
To get rid of slugs you can try placing small saucers of beer under the plant. The slug crawls in and drowns. If the infestation is bad this year then just buy slug pellets at the garden centre.

Dividing a hosta can be heavy work, but fortunately the plant has the constitution to tolerate the abuse.
Dig around the entire plant and under to lift as much of the rootball as possible. I hope you are strong.
After you lift the plant out of its spot, chop the rootball into appropriate size pieces with either a garden edger or an axe.

No plant needs to have mulch right up to its foliage.

I like to plant spring bulbs close to hostas because their leaves hide the ugly wilted leaves from the tulips and daffys ( you can't cut down spring bulb leaves when the flower is done because they are food for next years flower)

biggles

let them go till next spring you want to use a square shovel blade and 1/4 them up 6" X 6" just as they are start sprouting up in the spring.they are fully flowered and leafed out right now it is a nice spring first planting...to look foward to.when replanting use the same shovel and make holes say 6" deep and just place them in, fill around the roots with dirt.try to leave it low in the hole so water can pool water till the catch on...during water for the first year..neighbor gave me a 12" X 12" section 15yrs ago i'll put up pix tomorrow what they look like now...OK

Evstarr

Best to do it when the plants are not under stress but hostas are very difficult to kill.
As above it's mostly a brute force operation. Just keep them watered until they re establish.

biggles

these were all replanted from spring spouts on the slug issue plastic dish of sour milk under them,and or cut the top of a large plastic soda bottle...then flip it back into the bottle staple it and pour a little sour milk into it.slugs will crawl up into the opening and then can't get out http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/j...4/MVC-123S.jpg http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/j...4/MVC-121S.jpg

Pianolady

I use a saw to divide the root ball on my hostas.