Article published October 14, 2009
Caring for hydrangea
Readers are flooding me with questions about caring for and pruning hydrangea.
Before you start pruning you need to figure out what kind of plant you have, then mark your pruning schedule on your calendar right now.
Macrophylla hydrangea are also called mopheads. They are the ones that will turn pink and blue. Endless Summer is a macrophylla cultivar. There are also lacecaps that have wide blooms and look like a big lace doily on the end of a stem.
This shrub doesn't get cut down. If it has been planted for one year, leave it alone. The plant is just putting on one bloom per stem. The second year, it pushes out side shoots. Wait until the roots have a chance to get established before pruning. After five years, cut out the oldest stems down to the ground. You can do this right after it has finished blooming or in the winter. Thinning about one-third of the old wood will push the plant to grow new shoots.
Another type of hydrangea is called PeeGees. Most of these are white and bloom on the current year's growth. PeeGees, Grandiflora, and Annabelles don't need a lot of pruning unless they have broken stems or disease. But if you must prune, do it right after they are done blooming in the summer.
Oak leaf hydrangea, or hydrangea quercifolia, are very hardy and have foliage that turns colors in the fall.Prune off anything that is dead or crossing to give your plant good air circulation. If your shrub is more than five years old, cut about one-third of the shoots down to the ground each summer before July. Make your pruning cut just above that big, fat bud that is getting ready to bloom next year. This will give your plant the signal to start growing new shoots at the base. Look for stems that are older and more woody.
If you want bigger blooms, chop Annabelle and Grandiflora to about a foot off the ground in the winter. Their new growth starts sprouting in the spring and will push out larger sepals, which are the part we see as the blooms. Light pruning, just cutting off the tips, will keep the bush in shape but give you smaller blooms.
Reader Sue Wolniewicz asks, "What do I do with my hydrangea at the end of the season? I normally cut it down but someone told me not to do that. I've had it for seven years or so and it doesn't produce too many blue flowers, and this year I only had one flower on it."
She is describing typical problems with hydrangea. Check some of the basic care techniques you have been doing over the past seasons.
Always prune flowering shrubs immediately after they flower. You may have pruned at the wrong time and chopped off all of your buds.
The blossoms could have been hit by a late-spring cold spell and all the blossoms were frozen. If this were the case you wouldn't lose blooms for a decade. You might just lose them for one season. You also wouldn't lose all of the blooms.
When in doubt, leave the shrub alone for a season, boost the fertilizer using bags with higher second and third numbers to boost bloom and roots, and make good notes in your garden journal. Keep track of when you started to see the blooms form, flowering time, amount and kind of fertilizer used, late and early frost times, drought or flood conditions, and sunlight.
Contact Kelly Heidbreder at: kheidbreder@theblade.com
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