Care For Hydrangeas
Garden know how is important when trying to get the most abundant bloom from your hydrangeas. They can be tricky to prune in order to bloom abundantly. They are particular about what kind of soil and fertilizer they receive for bloom color. Hydrangeas are also choosy about what kind of light conditions they will do best in-partial shade is just the beginning.This is a guide to help you prune your hydrangea plants.
Hydrangea plants come in many different varieties. Hydrangea arborescence-one type of hydrangea-are sometimes called snow ball bush because of their white flowers and they bloom on new wood. Because hydrangea arborescence varieties bloom on “new” wood they can be pruned in the fall. They will produce new stalks in the spring which will bloom. The popular tree like hydrangeas are also white and are called paniculata hydrangeas and they benefit from fall pruning. Follow this simple rule: bloom white, prune in autumn.
It gets more complicated when you realize that there are other kinds of hydrangeas called hydrangea macrophyllas-these are the kind of hydrangeas that have purple, pink to light or dark blue flowers Hydrangea macrophyllas bloom on “old” wood and can ONLY be pruned before Mid-July the year before. Do not fret about how difficult this might seem?Let’s not forget oakleaf hydrangeas which are “old” wood growth bloomers. Prune it when?? Before mid july or no later than august the summer before.
So now that you are totally afraid to touch your hydrangeas it’s time to tell you about what you can do to help your macrophyllas bloom in the color you like. In order to promote blue blooms you will need to increase the acidity of your soil pH. Throw some pennies around the bottom of your hydrangea and add some pine needle mulch to improve the acidity. Changing the pH of your soil from alkaline to acid is a lot of hard work and does not usually go so well. Soils with less acidity and less aluminum produce pink hydrangea flowers. Incidentally if you can’t get them to bloom in exactly the right color you were hoping for you can always put a few gazing balls on metal stands in the hydrangea bushes in blue or pink to get the color that way. It looks nice and gives you the color accent you are looking for without all the hard labor of transforming your soil pH.
If your hydrangeas are still looking kind of tired out it is likely that they are not getting the correct kind of light. Hydrangeas should be put in semi shade. If you plant hydrangeas in full sun they won’t die, but you might wish they had. They can live in full shade but will be virtually with out flowers. They specifically need morning sun and afternoon shade. And as the name suggests they do not do well in drought(dry) conditions so remember to water them regularly and they should grow so abundantly you can use them as a hedge to hide an unsightly air conditioning unit, or plant them around the base of a recycled glass bird feeder to hide all the spent seeds.
Hopefully these steps will increase the blooms on your hydrangeas. Clearly it is of utmost importance to be armed with some information about what kind of hydrangea plant you are dealing with before you even touch your plant or the soil around it. All you have to do is memorize these simple tips and you will have lovely hydrangeas flowers in your garden too.
