When we moved here in October this plant was barely knee high. I've been giving it lots of TLC...now you can see it has responded remarkebly well. The house is built up off the ground about three and a half feet...then there is a concrete slab for the porch that is about 8 inches thick, so that will give you an idea as to how large the specimen is. I'm estimating it is at least 4 feet tall and about 8 feet wide. It hs more than doubled in height and tripled in breadth. I think they like me.....
It's a beautiful plant. Does it receive afternoon sun? What are you feeding it?
It gets mostly morning sun as the house blocks the afternoon sun. I have mostly been just watering it often since it has been very droughty this year. I have given it some epsom salts and ths week I gave it a shot of mriacle grow...other than that, the only fertilizer I have given it was when the neighbor's cows got out and came visiting and left me 'hostess gifts' in the yard. I took the dried out patties and palced them at the base of all my hydrangeas so they could slowly dissolve and fertilize the plants.
The last day or two, as some of the blossoms age, theya re turning pink. Every pic I've ver seen of oakleaf hydrangeas has white flowers...and these have been solid white till this morning. I had a couple of white blosoms spotted with pink...now I have several spires that are turning pink as they age. Don't know if this is unusual...maybe it has something to do with the magnesium I've been giving them, or the Miracle Grow....but they jsut started doing it.
BamaBelle
i don,t know how i missed your thread,but i did,
i have a oakleaf hydranger but mine is growing up like a tree,how did you get it to grow like you did
heres a picture of mine
and heres another view
Yours is pretty young yet. Maybe it is just the size...or maybe it is because mine are reaching to get more sun. They put out pups at the roots that are attached to the plant. You can sperate them to make more plants, or you can leave them and let the plant bush out. I do a little of both. My blooms are now dark pink. Newer blooms are still white. But most of the blooms are old now and they are dark pink. this is my first experience with the oakleaf hydrangeas, so I am finding them fascinating.
Here is what my oakleaf hydrangeas look like now with all the blooms aging and turnign pink.
BamaBelle
oh wow!!!! that is beautiful,you said you use mirical grow on it, i will try that.heres my other one but don,t know what king it is
I just call those mopheads. I don't know enough about them to know the different varieties. In fact, I'd never even heard of oakleaf hydrangeas till I bought the house and had three of them growing out front. When we moved here in October, I could tell they were hydrangeas because they had some dead head blooms on them....but I had never seen the spike shaped blooms and the oak leaf foliage really threw me. When winter came and the leaves turned colors, I started falling in love with them.
In addition to giving them Miracle Grow, I also put a few drops of SuperThrive in wtih the MG mix...and then I sprinkle Epsome salts around the roots every couple of weeks to keep the leaves nice and dark green.
BamaBelle
thanks ,i will give all that a try
Starfly,
Don't forget that hydrangeas love water....but don't like wet feet. You need to water them often, but don't let the roots just sit in water. We had a very dry A[pril...we normally get 6+ inches and this year we only got about an inch. I was out there watering every day.....never a lot, just enough to keep everybody happy. My hydrangeas are sheltered from the sun during the heat of the day, but they also sit under the eaves of the porch so when it rains, they get all the drippies off the roof. My hydrangeas that are on the one side of the porch are smaller than the ones on the other side. I didn't figure out why till I started digging my garden....grubs....lots and lots of grubs. They killed the grass on that side of the yard and they were keeping my hydrangeas on that side from growing much. I finally put down some stuff that kills grub worms and the plants on that side are starting to take off now. Thye are still smaller than the rest, and they are behind the rest on blooms, but hoepfully they will catch up soon.
BamaBelle
we have had a really dry time so far just got some rain after 78 day,my grass looked like straw,
i water mine every other morning,i only have one
place to grow them since i don,t have much shade,
and i,m haveing trouble with tree roots,there used to be so many oaks and pine tree here untill my hubby got a wild hair and cut them all down,all i have now is some wild dogwoods.
where in ala,do you live? ,i used to live in cullman
I'm just 8 minutes north of Dothan. There are two DL nurseries in this town of just 4,000.....and another one on the other side of Dothan. I could get into serious trouble if it weren't for the fact that my hubby goes everywhere with me. He says it is because he is afraid the car will break down and I will be stranded because I am disabled....but I think it is because he knows that if he isn't in the car, it has a homing device that causes it to automtically steer into any nursery or craft store it passes......
BamaBelle
oh that is funny homeing device,i just got started with african violets,started out with 4 now over 60,
didn,t know there was so many different kinds of violets,i don,t drive,so i use the internet and my credit card,hubby gave me one far 300 ,so i use that then pay it off and start again.i love plants,got my first gardenia to bloom this year,i have killed so many
I've had trouble with gardenias myself. I killed a few...and the ones I didn't kill either got covered with mildew or had white fly infestations. I finally gave up.
I had quit driving for several years, but when my hubby had cancer last year, I had to drive him back and forth an hour each way for treatment for sven weeks...and then I had to take him abck and forth for checkups for a couple of months. It was kind of scary driving again after so many years of not driving. But the sense of freedom it gave me was exhilterating...especially since my hubby would often get antsy when he took me shopping. First of all he hates to spend money....secondly, he is impatient. We now have a system where he brings a book and sits in the car while I shop because I refuse to bring him inside with me unless he agrees not to complain constantly. Mostly, though, I do my shopping online. It is just easier than listening to him complain. As my old boss used to say, "It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission." Online I can order stuff, then tell him. If I ask him to take me to the store, I have to listen to a lecture about not spending too much. Of course, what he doesn't take into account is the amount of money I spend on shipping when I order online. If he were smart, he would just keep his mouth shut and jtake me shopping...I'd get more for my money and spend less at the same time.....LOL!
BamaBelle
sorry about the cancer,my sister had breast cancer,we had a scare with prostate cancer,but there keeping a close watch on my hubby,3 years ago his kidneys quit,so another scare,don,t think it ever quits something allways popping up
i halven,t drove in about 13 years,have so much trouble with my legs.
check your dmail
I have lupus, fibromylagia, rheumatoid arthritis, seizures, migraines and a jont disease called multifocal avascular necrosis. the siezures are controlled. I quit dirving because I used to take Lortab or Oxycontin for pain and the pain doc 'suggested' taht I not drive when under the influence....and since I was always under the influence, I just quit driving. Now I take a med that has been proven not to cause reactins to be any more delayed than being in pain and not taking meds...but my hubby still worries abut me driving alone...what if the car breaks down, etc.
I had a rare reproductive cancer 3 years ago. With trophoblastic cancer if it is going to come back, it usualy comes back in the fist year. If it doesn't come back in two years, it isn't coming back. I had a D&C first to try to get rid of it...didn't work. Then I had chemo and a hysterectomy. David was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer last April/May. He had a new treatment that spares the vocal cords, which was important since he speaks for a living. He would have ended up giving up on life if they had removed his vocal cords. The nurse told us taht the only cases whre it has come back with this type of treatment was when the paitent started back smoking. He is still scared witless, but I feel comfortable that he is out of the woods. It is taking him a long time to recover from the treatment and the malunutrtion, though....he is getting better all the time. His voice sounds really great. We recorded it and emailed it to his doc and they now use it when suggesting this treatment to other laryngeal cancer patients...plus they give thepaitents my email so they can talk to us...David doesn't liek to talk to the cancer patients much...but I talk to the care givers a LOT. I think it is probably harder to be a care giver than to be the patient. I mean you feel so abd, all you can think about is sleepign or being miserable when you are taking chemo or having radiatin. But when you are the careguver, you have your own emotioanl reactions to deal with, taking care of your loved one, running the home.....everythhing falls on your shoulders. We lived with David's mom and she was useless. I'd send her to the store for Kleenex, just so she could feel like she was contributing, but really she was no help at all and mostly got in the way or made things worse.
BamaBelle
Oh lord ,how have you cope this long,i have rheumotoed arthritis,congested heart failure,not sure whats wrong with my legs,but swell so bad, and there days i can,t walk.but i pray and lean on the good lord,thats what keeps me going,then i hear of people that is so much worse off than me
then i asked the lord to forgive me far being such a whiner.you both will be in our prayers.
my very best friend passed away 5 years ago ,she had to family just a dumb sorry husband that was wishing she would hurry up and die,so i lived with her the last 1 1/2 months off her life.she died in my arms with me singing to her.am so thankfull i was there far her.you sound like a very careing person
Each person copes in his or her own way...and each person has a different threshold for pain (men are wimps! If they had babies the human race would die out!) My problems have all been slow to develop and have developed one at the time, so each time I adjust to the new problem. However, I do take medicatin to help me deal with the pain, otherwise I would not be able to tolerate it. I had a cousin whose wife had kidney failure back in the bad old days when they thought that pain meds would turn chronic pain patients into addicts. She ended up committing suicide.
I've got a pretty good life, all things considered. Although I am in constant pain, it is under control...and because I am disabled I get to spend my days with my family and dong things I enjoy doing...as long as I don't try to do too much. For instance, I can only cook and do laundry about once a month. My hubby does ALL the housework. Most of my hobbies are sedate things like quilting...and I sleep12-22 hours per day. But I am happy with my life and it is enough for me most of the time. I do miss doing volunteer work...and ocassionally I play with the idea of trying to get back into it...but then reality hits me like a brick and I realize that I can't plan my schedule form one hour to the next, much less do anything that requires me to be somewhere at a specific day or time.
Your leg problem sounds like a circulation problem. With your CHF, you probably retain a lot of fluids which gather in your legs. Has your doc adjusted your Lasix lately?
