Disease on Hosta Leaves, How to Treat Them, & Deer Preventative

Joe in North Canton. He says, ‘I just transplanted a bunch of hostas. The older we get, I’m trying to eliminate the pulling of weeds. But on some of them, I see the leaves are turning brown. And I did put a deer repellent on it. I didn’t know that was hurting the plant.’

If you sprayed it when it was mid 80s last week, it can cause a negative effect on the foliage. The nice thing with the hosta is it’ll come right back. It’s very forgiving. And we have been seeing a little bit of anthracnose on hostas this year, simply because of the environment.

If more than half the leaf’s damaged, I would probably trim those off. You can trim off the bad leaves and everything like that, if they are unsightly or something like that. But it’s not going to hurt it.

I want to come back around to anthracnose. It’s a virus that thrives in the soil. Tomatoes can get things like that. And when the environment’s right, really cold and wet, which we’ve had, ta-da. So if that is the case, and you are seeing stuff like that, little brown spots or edges on the leaves,  leaves are kind of curling up, those you would want to take out and throw away.

Just the leaf, really. You can go all the way down to the stem, but it’s really just a matter of sanitation and getting rid of that. Remove that from the area. Don’t leave the clippings laying. Keep your pruners sanitized and that kind of thing. Hostas are very forgiving. And they’re going to correct it once we start getting warmer. But we’ve seen a lot of that this year. As our environment changes, it will naturally go away on its own. But a little bit of fertilizer isn’t going to hurt either.

Any time the plant is sick, just like we are, proper nutrition is huge for keeping us healthy and fighting off things. Same thing in the plant world. That’s actually how I described it to somebody the other day. Like anthracnose, it’s almost like a plant cold in a way. And when the environment’s right, it really can have an outbreak. And when you have certain ones get it, then it can affect those that are beside it and that kind of stuff.

It shouldn’t kill the whole plant. It’s something that just disfigures the foliage on it. And so those foliage pieces that are disfigured, trim them off, and then you shouldn’t have a problem in the future. I don’t expect us to be cold and wet all summer.

Now the deer do like the hostas, that’s for sure. The Repels-all repellent does help. I like the spray for flowers and the leaves when they’re munching on that. But the granular is really nice for putting it around the area of it. It lasts longer. Especially for weeks when we’re getting a lot of rain.

So the liquid can get diluted and washed off the leaf, where the granular is going to stay behind and create an effervescence that kind of irritates the nose and the nostrils of the deer. So they just stay away from that area because it’s uncomfortable for them to be there.

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