Two enormous hydrangeas were blooming behind our home when we lived in Florida. These took up the whole flower bed and bloomed most of the year, filling the backyard with pretty blue and pink flowers. We cut them and put them in vases almost the house to add a splash of color. They kept blooming, so we never ran out. This is when my oldest and I both fell in love with these cool flowers whose colors changed.
How Do Hydrangeas Work?
Hydrangeas are beautiful perennial shrubs with flowers. Even a beginner gardener can grow hydrangeas, even though they can get pretty big and be the center of attention in your garden. These beautiful flowers grow like weeds.
In just one season, hydrangeas can grow to heights of up to 15 feet, filling in a lot of unused space. In hardiness zones 3 through 7, you can find hydrangeas that come back every year. Hydrangeas are beautiful foundation plants for your garden because they bloom from spring through summer and into early fall.
How To Set Up Hydrangeas
Like many other shrubs, hydrogenates do best when planted in the fall. This gives them a few weeks to get established before the weather gets cooler and the whole winter to ensure their roots are strong before they bloom in the spring.
Hydrangeas do best in the morning sun and later in the day in the shade. This makes them a great choice for the east side of your house, where the sun will cover them in the morning, and the shade will protect them from the heat in the afternoon.
Hydrangeas grow best in well-drained soil with much organic matter that lets water stay in the soil without making it soggy. Before you plant your hydrangeas, you might want to mix compost and wood chips into the soil to give them the best start possible.
Since mulch doesn’t break down as quickly as other organic matter, your hydrangea plants will be able to grow well for many years while the soil stays in good shape. Dig a hole about 2 feet wider and 2 inches deeper than the root ball of your hydrangea.
By offering a damp but not wet surface, soil mounds will aid in the drainage of your rootball. By digging two feet wider than your root ball, you can mix as much compost and organic matter into the soil and loosen it up as much as possible. This lets the roots grow as far as possible.
How To Grow Hydrangeas In A Pot
Hydrangeas are easy to grow in big, wide pots. These look great in your home’s front doorway. Not regular garden soil, but good potting soil with organic matter. It will help if you put the hydrangea back where it was planted, at the same level, so you don’t cover any of the stems and cause them to rot. Put mulch on top of the soil to help keep water in during the hot summer months. Please leave a little space below the pot’s rim so it’s easy to water.
Hydrangeas Propagation Techniques
The layering method is the best way to grow hydrangeas from cuttings. This helps the plant stay alive by giving the mother plant the food it needs while its roots grow. The trench method is easy and only needs a shovel, a knife, and something heavy to hold the branch down. You can use the same method to make copies of tomato plants.
- Near the hydrangea plant, you should dig a small trench.
- A good branch should touch the ground in the middle and reach up to 12 inches past the trench.
- Use a clean knife to cut lines into the bark of the branches where they will touch the dirt in the trench.
- After you bury the branch in the ground, put pavers, bricks, or stones on top of the trench to keep it from coming back up.
- Over time, roots will grow on a branch, allowing it to be moved to a different spot once it has a root system.
Some types, like Smooth and Oakleaf hydrangeas, have underground stems that send up new shoots. You can plant the young plants away from the mother plant by digging them up. For these kinds, you need to thin out the new shoots often so they don’t get too close together and cause problems.
How To Let Hydrangeas Grow From Cuts
Take a 5- to a 6-inch-long piece of a branch from the hydrangea bush. This year, branches that didn’t bloom should be used for cuttings because they will work better. Cuttings should be dipped in a rooting hormone for the best results and put in moist vermiculite, coarse sand, or another sterile growing medium until roots appear.
How To Take Care Of Plants
Once they are established, hydrangeas don’t need much care and will grow like weeds if they don’t get any. If you just put your hydrangeas in the garden, you should take extra care of them first. Still, once it is established, it will take care of itself, except during long droughts, when it needs fertilizer, or when the pH changes, which can change the color of your hydrangeas.
Deep watering can help your plants grow deeper roots, making them better handle drought. Every three to four days, at least 2 inches of water. Water hydrangeas only if there is a severe drought after their first year
Your hydrangeas should get new mulch once a year when you plant them. Moisture is retained in the soil as the mulch breaks down, and nutrients are added as it decomposes. People who live in cooler areas will benefit from this mulch because it will protect the roots of their plants and help them make it through the winter.
When the weather heats up again in the late fall and early spring, it will also assist them in developing robust roots. If you want more flowers from your hydrangeas, you need to feed them. Each type of plant will need a different amount of fertilizer.
Depending on how they grow, bigleaf hydrangeas must be fertilized lightly every 4 to 6 weeks in the spring, while smooth hydrangeas only need to be fertilized once in the late winter. Using a soil test kit, you can determine if your soil needs more nutrients to help your hydrangeas grow well.
Hydrangeas: When To Prune
It would be best to prune your hydrangeas to look their best during the growing season. For a neat look, gardeners should cut off spent blooms just below the flower head and pull out any canes growing in the wrong direction at the soil line.
If you want to remove old wood, you should do it right after the flowers die. If you leave the flowers for too long, you won’t see the spring flowers. New buds are formed on the shrub’s new wood during the growing season, so it should be pruned early in the spring before new growth starts.
When hydrangeas get old and woody, their flowers tend to get smaller. When old canes are regularly cut off at the soil line, a few older canes will allow the shrub to bloom more and make more flowers. By cutting off the tallest canes, the same method can be used to keep shrubs from getting too tall.