Hostas are low-maintenance perennials. They don’t need hours of painstaking attention to produce a rich, decorative display of foliage in all their different shades or patterns. But they are not no-maintenance, and once the plants die down at the end of the season, a trio of tasks can protect your hostas from pests, disease, frost, and rot.

The key hosta care tasks to remember for this month are removing old leaves and debris, mulching, and protecting potted plants. These simple maintenance tasks keep the plants in the best shape over winter and primed to return strongly in spring.

Here is what to do with hostas in November so plants survive winter frosts and freezing rain, and don’t face an immediate risk of slugs, snails, or disease when they start regrowing next year. You will need a good pair of gardening gloves (available at Amazon) to winterize hostas, as the old growth can be slimy, especially after frost.

1. Remove Old Leaves

Slugs and snails are the bane of any hosta grower’s life. The common winter garden pests are notorious for nibbling hosta foliage, turning what should be glorious leaves into a patchwork of holes and skeletal remains.

Getting rid of all slugs and snails in the garden is a pipe dream, but one important job stops them overwintering around the hostas and coming back with a vengeance to eat all the new growth straight away in the spring. That is by removing all the old leaves and debris from around the plant.

This leaf litter is a protected space where pests can shelter and lay their eggs. Removing it stops the fresh generation from running amok come spring and destroying your hostas before they’ve had a chance to get going.

Evicting them from their winter hiding hole is also an efficient slug control method because it puts them out in the open for birds to see and potentially eat.

If you haven’t already, remove any dead or yellow hosta leaves from flower beds or containers along with any other nearby leaf litter. Dead leaves or debris may also harbor disease – removing them stops bacteria or spores from overwintering and infecting your hostas next year.

My go-to gardening tool for clearing beds is a hand rake, such as this stainless steel hand rake at The Home Depot. It takes little time to run the rake around the base of plants to gather debris.

It is usually easy to cut back hostas in the fall, as most old hosta leaves are stringy or mushy come November and come away easily. If any don’t, snip them at ground level with sharp pruners, like these titanium bypass pruning shears at Amazon.

2. Apply Mulch

Hostas are cold-hardy down to US hardiness zone 3; they die back in the fall and come back to life in the spring. To get your hosta in the best possible shape to grow again next year and put on a really good show, mulching can be an enormously beneficial task.

Mulching retains warmth in the soil and protects the hostas' roots from the cold temperatures. It prevents frost heave, when repeated freezing and thawing lift a plant from the soil. In the worst case, frost heave can lift a hosta from the ground, leaving its unprotected roots vulnerable to the elements.

If you recently planted hostas and they haven’t had time to form a strong, deep root system, they are at increased risk of frost heave. Also, if you divided hostas in the fall to get new plants and rejuvenate older clumps, they are more susceptible.

Other mulching benefits include discouraging weeds that compete with your hostas for water and nutrients and retaining moisture in the soil. Hostas are thirsty plants, and well-watered ones traditionally come back stronger in the spring.

After cutting back hostas in the fall, add a thin layer of compost, wood chips, or bark mulch. But don’t make the mulching mistake of piling this material over the crown, as it can trap moisture and encourage rot.

3. Move Pots

Hostas, as a whole, are very hardy plants that don’t need winter protection. The two exceptions are newly planted hostas and those growing in pots.

If you grow miniature hostas in pots, they need extra attention to get through winter unscathed. Plants are more susceptible in containers, with only a thin layer of compost and the pot providing insulation between the roots and frost.

The easiest way to protect garden pots for winter is moving them together into a sheltered area, like against a south-facing wall or under the eaves. It creates a warmer microclimate, blocks cold winds, and protects them from winter rain.

If you have just a pot or two of miniature hostas growing in containers, though, put them in an unheated greenhouse, cold frame, or porch for winter. Or you can wrap them in winter pot covers (like these on Walmart) to insulate the roots.

However, they are not indoor plants and shouldn’t be brought into the home. Hostas need to remain dormant but sheltered from frost and freezing rain.

To prevent waterlogging and hostas rotting over winter, raise them on pot feet so the container drains efficiently over the colder months. The last thing you want is plants sitting in waterlogged soil, which then freezes solid. You can get a 24-pack of rubber pot feet on Amazon for all your container plants.

Now that you know what to do with hostas in November, it is worth pointing out one important task not to do this month. That is fertilizing hostas. Don’t think about feeding hosta plants until new growth starts to emerge in the spring.

This timing is perfect; a spring feed gives the plant all the essential nutrients it needs to develop its lush foliage for the season.

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