H. 'Patriot'

Like a few others listed above, 'Patriot' is new for us in 2005. At the moment 2 of them are planted in the ground in 2 different locations in the yard, the rest of the package of bare roots were potted up and offered for sale in our plant sales.Hosta 'Patriot'One's in the frontyard, this one, the other in the back. I'm not quite sure what to do with the potted ones we may have left over after the last sale on the Victoria day weekend, leave them potted or plant them out -where am I going to find space- but hey, nothing says they cannot stay in their pots and be kept until next year.

One of the potted ones did not get sold -actually we held it back on purpose- and of the three roots we have, in the first week of June it shows the most albescence, the other two, which were planted in the ground, show still noticeably cream margins.

This cultivar was the Hosta of the Year for 1997, as selected by The American Hosta Growers Association. To receive this honor the plant must be readily available in the nursery trade for retail distribution and meet the criteria for pricing, which is around $15 in the year of selection.

H. 'Patriot'These are a couple of the potted ones, on May 15th, and you can already see how one of them has gone white in the margin.

H. 'Patriot'This is the same plant you first saw, a few weeks later, on June 14/05. Notice how the variegation has gone through its albescence phase.

'Patriot' is supposed to be quite vigorous and judging by this shot from early February '06 I would concur. This is the potted one from last year, now in a 3 gallon pot, and it would seem we'll start out spring with 3 eyes on this root, compared to just one last year. Another one which was planted in the ground in the backyard shows similar vigour.

Additional bare roots of 'Patriot' were purchased in 2006 and I was horrified to see they are proving to be HVX infected, along with a number of other cultivars from the same source: Costco. Needless to say I'm keeping a close eye on the roots from 2005, they came from there as well and while it is not at all inconceivable that the viral infection occurred AFTER those were harvested, I obviously have grave concerns. This picture here will give you some idea of what the infected plants looked like.

I'm happy to observe that by the end of July 2006 last year's plants have not shown any signs of HVX infection and that certainly bodes well. Two of them were planted out in the garden and while one of them showed 4 points in the spring, it was in a location where it just was not receiving an adequate amount of moisture and you could tell it just wasn't happy where it was. Matter of fact, it is the one you see in the first picture at the top of the page, when it was still just a single shoot on the crown. At best each new shoot only sported 2 leaves and that certainly is not the kind of vigour we expect out of this cultivar. So, out it comes and it nicely divided into 4 small plants, which were put into Promix BX® and are doing fine, appreciating all that moisture they haven't seen for some time. In the process of course we have also increased the number of plants for sale for next spring without having to resort to purchasing additional bare roots.

Well, I'm pleased to report that the cuttings we made last year ('06) are coming up nicely in April '07, though not quite as big as I'd hoped for and I'll just have to nurse them along over the summer to put some meat on their bones so to speak. The one in the #3 pot in the sideyard is showing in excess of 10 shoots, so it ought to look quite nice by mid-May.

In early April '07 I had a minor accident with one of the small divisions. It was starting to put out a second shoot which somehow ended up getting broken off. It was too immature to have developed any roots as yet, but I knew that if I planted it and kept it moist that eventually roots would start to develop and new growth would show. Sure enough it did, as you can see here. When it broke off there was only one leaf, by the third week of June leaf number three is starting to show!

More information about this variety and its sports are found in Hugo's Database.

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Pages last updated 28 November 2018