On Tuesday Stephen came to my garage to help me wade through my usual Spring splitting of accents plants. I’m trying to build a nice collection and always like to have spares to sell and swap. A few weeks back I posted about hostas and a blog follower requested that I cover how I split them. This is it 🙂

Stephen hard at work.

A tray full of Soldanella ready for a tidy up.

Some of the recently potted accents.

This one clump of hosta yielded seven plants.

This one was next, ‘Rock Island Line’, originally purchased at Bali Hai Nursery here in Northern Ireland. I have a marking system, white name label, pink label if it’s my stock plant and blue if I reckon it’s ready to split.

Shake off the top dressing of grit. and pop it out of the pot.

A shake out can get rid of most of the lose potting mix.

Then carefully start to tease apart the root mass, in some cases a sharp knife can be used to split down between two shoots.

Split in half, but not finished yet.

Split further…

and again…

and the five plants separated..

potted up in fresh mix

and top dressed with a layer of grit to keep the weeds at bay.

This one is back as stock plant.

This one was selected as worthy of being potted up as an accent. The three shoots will allow for it to bulk out quickly.

A little root pruning can be done, just as in bonsai. This can help reduce the leaf size of the plant compared to being grown in open ground.

A little mix in the bottom of the pot.

Placed in pot and filled around the edges with mix.

And the finished result, label added so I can keep track of what varieties I have potted up. Like the pot, this one by Will Baddelely, obtained as part of a swap with Chris Royal. Cheers Chris 😉

This is a great time to split, however I have had great success splitting in July as well with absolutely no issues with the plants being in leaf.

Anyone interesting in swapping, or even buying a few, drop me an email via the Contact Me tab at the top.