With a handful of exceptions, most of my hostas are up and some are even starting to unfurl. Though most of my pictures are of individual hostas, I thought that I should create a new thread for hostas in the Spring.

Here is the brightest yellow in my yard right now, 'Fire Island'.

A very nice streaker that comes up early and is one of the last plants in the garden to go to sleep in the fall, has good slug resistance even though the leaves are not thick, and multiplies quickly - 'Savannah Supreme'.

This is a blurry picture of 'Frosted Mouse Ears'. I can take or leave the minis and small hostas, but my hubby really likes them! At least all the mouse ears family have excellent slug resistance. My favorite thus far of the group is 'Cat and Mouse' but it is not yet unfurling. I ordered 'Mouse Tracks' this year, which is a streaked mouse ears, which I am rather excited about.

One more streaked hosta, here is 'Stealth' which is in its third year in my garden. The first year it was an absolute slug magnet. Last year I started really being diligent with the ammonia sprayer and bait, which helped a lot. Actually I think it is that entire area under a pine that is bad for slugs, not particularly this hosta. As you can see, I've already sprinkled bait around this year!

Final one for today, here is a hosta that Jeff gave me last year as a seedling when he and Marie came to Iowa City for the great pagoda dogwood caper

He named this one 'Legal Eagle' and it grew to be quite large last season. This year it added a second eye and is still streaked!

Isn't spring just great? Love the unfurling...

Montana Aureomarginata starting to unfurl

A 2009 Seedling that seems to be a fast grower. 5 eyes this year and the streaking is still there also. Definitely one to watch.

Another 2009 seedling coming up. I like the leaf shape with the ripples.

An eye we divided off of H. Paradigm last fall starting to unfurl

Part of our #1 bed which is protected from the elements a little better than the other beds.

A little more of the same bed. The hostas are definitely farther along in this bed than any of our others. We have few that may unfurl in the next few days in the other beds but mostly just a lot of eyes poking up for now.

Great pictures Kit and Gary! I love spring. The torture of waiting for the hostas to unfurl is almost worst than waiting to see pips poking out of the soil. My 'Gunther's Prize' OS is starting to unfurl and I don't see streaking, I can never remember if it starts with streaks though so I was panicking yesterday night.

However the streaked single eye of 'Blue Ivory' I found at a nursery last year is multiplied to FOUR eyes and as they're unfurling it looks like all four will be streaked! I'll have to take pictures tonight.

Woo Hoo, Elizabeth!! You little streaker, you!!

Way to go Elizabeth.
I just came in from uncovering some of last years seedling bed. There are a lot of pips coming up. Several have multiple eyes. One even has 7. I am excited to see what last year's babies look like. I was afraid that we would lose a lot over the winter but so far there are only 2 or 3 that haven't come up yet.
I can't remember how Gunther's Prize develops in the spring either. I wouldn't get too concerned over it yet.

Gary

'Marrakech' after a cool shower this afternoon.

Here is a whole plant picture of my streaked 'Blue Ivory'. The streaking appears to be all in the margins this year, which is really cool!

Close-up of one of the individual leaves. Each leaf is slightly different.

Two leaves of a different eye. There are four eyes now, each eye is streaked. Three of the four eyes are quite similar, the fourth eye has a lot more white on the border on it than the other two - though there is still streaking in each eye.

I like it!