Today I wanted to cover a very common garden plant that is also a traditionally eaten vegetable in Japan.

You might not think of them as a food plant, but they’re a pretty good one to add to your diet when most other greens are bitter or sparse.

Let’s take a look at the humble hosta:

Scientific Name: Hosta sp. (Hosta capitata, Hosta kiyosumiensis, Hosta sieboldiana among others)

Preferred Habitat: Partial or full shade is actually the preference of hosta species. Sometimes full sun is fine for them as well. In North America hostas tend to be found in modern landscaping primarily, not so much in the wild. In my experience they tend to prefer moist areas that have a decent ratio of organic matter in the soil.

Edible Parts: Young shoots, flowers.

Distribution: Largely the eastern half of the United States is where they’re distributed outside of their normal range (in Asia).

Harvest Season: Spring

Nutrition:

For such a common plant, especially one that is consumed traditionally in Japan, you’d expect there to be more information on the nutrition profile of hosta.

Unfortunately all I can provide is that it contains:

Yet another plant that could benefit from some nutrient research! (Seriously, there are not enough people researching this kind of thing).

Hosta is really only edible as young shoots before the leaves have started opening.

This isn’t because of any danger, it’s just because the plants tend to get fibrous and unpleasant to eat as they get older.

This is actually the first year I’ve eaten hosta shoots! I did this just for you guys so I can give you an accurate and fresh take on the flavor profile. My overall opinion is that they’re a great vegetable for something that is so little effort as well as a perennial!

Firstly, we ate them cooked, however you can eat them raw as well with no risk. They have a slight bit of mucilage in them (like okra but not even remotely as much) but that seems to go away quite a bit when cooked.

The flavor is very mild and mostly bland, similar to romaine hearts. I had heard before that they taste slightly like asparagus and this is true but I think the only hint of asparagus flavor mostly comes from the aroma when they are cooked.

So there you go; romaine hearts with a hint of asparagus! They pair well with strong or salty sauces as they are traditionally eaten in Japan as a vegetable (known as “urui”).

The shoots can be eaten raw, fried, boiled, dipped in sauces, used in soups, or simply eaten as a side dish. We found that they would probably pair well with ramps and other onions.

The flowers can also be eaten apparently, but that’s mostly to add beauty to a dish since they taste somewhat astringent and bland.

Hostas will start shooting up out of the ground in spring (for me it’s in the first week of May that they’re tall enough to harvest). This is around the time you’ll start to get the spring greens coming up so it really adds something to your bounty.

They grow quite fast though so I’d keep a close eye on any that you want to harvest!

Most mature hosta clumps can not only handle some pruning, but can actually benefit from thinning so harvesting won’t harm the plant! Some hosta growers actually cut back the first shoots completely since it encourages a second flush of shoots to sprout.

Hostas can also be divided when the clump is large enough (I’ve split clumps as small as 8in across).

In the summer, they grow tall stalks with small cone-shaped flowers along them.

When I was younger, I remember planting hostas with my mom at our old house and I remember desperately wanting to own elephant hostas after seeing them in other people’s yards and realizing I could crawl underneath the large foliage!

These are a pretty easy vegetable to get your hands on and to grow, so I recommend it if you want a fresh taste of spring.

I would say that your options are limited to some degree with finding vegetables that grow well in shade, so I like that hosta fills that niche pretty nicely. They are also harvested fairly early in the spring which is nice. I definitely recommend them for the average gardener!

There are over 3,000 cultivars of hosta available worldwide so you have a lot of options!

While there are many species and hybrids, I will just list whatever the cultivar is (most sites will say what species or cross their varieties are anyway).

Let’s look at a few that I’ve decided to highlight:

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