Bud Culling

     Often a desirable sport appears in only a leaf or two on a hosta. Previous methods described for trying to isolate that sport and get a whole plant of that type have involved reducing the plant to a minimum size or just leaving it alone and hoping for the best. The method described here, which I call "Bud Culling" is a method that leaves most of the plant intact and allows it to get off to a much better start than methods like Ran Lydell's "Bud Isolation", which reduces the resulting plant to liner size.
     Bud Culling simply removes any buds under any leaves which are not the desired type, and can be used to remove unwanted sports as well as to encourage them. By removing the buds we do not want to form next year's divisions, we greatly increase the odds of a division of the type we want to see. Buds that form under a leaf will normally have the type of variegation seen in that leaf, so in a plant with more than one type of variegation present we are trying to choose which buds grow into the next year's divisions.
    The easiest and most sensible time to try Bud Culling is in the Fall, late enough for there to be little chance of buds sprouting that year. At this time, the buds are large and fully developed. It would be a waste of time and effort if the buds you choose to sprout do so in November only to be destroyed by hard freezes. Because doing it at this time stays in tune with the natural growth cycle of the plant, growth proceeds at a normal pace. It can be attempted early in the season, but should then be done about midsummer after the plant has formed new roots. If it is done then, all leaves should be removed to cause the chosen buds to sprout immediately. A variation on this technique would be to remove the buds in midsummer without removing the leaves, doing as little damage to the leaf as possible. The damage to the leaf might cause it to be lost anyway and the risk of infection is greater, so this is a riskier technique.

     In the following pictures Bud Culling is demonstrated with help from Carol Brashear, who took the photos.

1. In this photo we have the subject of our demonstration. This is a plant of 'Spring Fling' in late October with several streaked and several normally margined leaves. We want to insure that we have a streaked plant next year, rather than the stable form which in this plant seems just as likely to appear. As the leaves are about equally divided, one can assume that the meristem of this division carries roughly equal amounts of both tissues.

2. Begin by removing the plant from the pot or garden and cleaning it so the base of the crown and rhizome are clearly visible. Thoroughly cleaning it with a mild bleach solution is preferable. Injuries to plant tissue this late in the season are much less likely to become infected, so this plant was just rinsed to make the demonstration.

3. Growth buds may have formed separately from different parts of the rhizome. If these form near the desired leaves, they may or may not be the desired form. The buds under the desired leaves are the most likely to give the form seen in those leaves, so this bud was removed.

4. This late in the season, next year's growth buds are plump and strong and ready for winter. Some, like this one, have grown so large that they split the base of the leaf as they grow.