Some questions about my first Hydrangea

Hello All, I've been doing veggie gardening for a few years, but I am very new to the flowering stuff. Oddly enough, I decided to buy a little shoebox house from a lady... who had gardened & planted there for 45 years. :)

One of her favorite plants, and one of the more colorful, is the old hydrangea out front. I think it is in need of a pruning, but in reading around, I may have missed this summers window. Any thoughts?

When I do, do I have to prune to the ground always, or can some stems be trimmed off?

Any other advice, would be welcome, I'm attaching a couple of pictures to assist my horrid description.

Chris

Closer Pic.

hmmm it's hard to tell what kind you have but I'd say trim out the branches, to the ground, of the ones that are blooming this year. If you trim out the new growth, you will have no blooms next year.

Virginia Pesto-

That looks like an Annabelle to me. I have 3 that are doing quite well (Zone 5b, West Michigan) and I have yet to cut them back since we bought this house (2 years). I plan to cut back this year, ever so carefully. Any advice on how to do it, when, precautions,etc, would be greatly appreciated. I would hate to see these guys not do well next spring. The flowers were pure white a few weeks ago and now they are going back to the lime green color they started out at. The attached photo is a pic of a gound layering I did several weeks ago. I "buried" a limb under the large rock and the lighter colored leaves are the new growth. It appears to have taken. I've tried root cuttings with no success.

Virginia Pest-

Here is a photo of one single white flower. It's the only one among all lime-green floweres. I've learned from others on this site that "Annabelle" will not change color to pink or blue with changes to the soil acidity level. With Annablle you always have white. Anyone disagree? If so, please advise on how to change the color of my flowers.

Sorry VP--didn't mean to write Virginia Pest....instead of Pesto. We love pesto in our family, do you grow basil?

Last but not least, a pic of the entire Hydrangea "tree" itself.

Michelle--Annabelle is a cultivar of H. arborescens, so it will not change colors due to soil pH. It also blooms on new wood, so it can be pruned anytime.

Virginia--I am not sure that yours is Annabelle, take a look at Michelle's pictures and see what you think, but yours looks more like an H. macrophylla cultivar to me, although I wouldn't be able to guess which one. If that's the case, it's most likely one that blooms on old wood (there are a few newer cultivars like Endless Summer that bloom on new wood, but they're relatively recent introductions so if this plant has been around for a while then it's likely an old-wood one). If it were my hydrangea, I would do what woodspirit suggested and take the stems that have flowers on them this year and prune those back to the ground. Stems that have flowers this year wouldn't bloom next year anyway, so you won't be losing anything by pruning them. However, if you want flowers next year, don't do anything to the stems that don't have flowers (if there are a few that are just really ugly or in the way or something you can get rid of those, but if you chop out too many then you won't have many flowers). Don't even trim the ends of those stems--that's where the flowers will be so if you try to shorten the stems to make the shrub have a nicer shape, you'll lose your flowers.

I wonder if the new growth could be trimmed if it was done really early in the growing season and still flower the next year? This might make the shrub bushier and have more blooms. Anyone know?
I also need to know if deer eat hydrangeas. I have a friend coming up today to get some plants and I thought I'd give her one that had self-layered. But she has big deer problems.

The best way to make it bushier is to still prune the stems that have the flowers on them this year, but instead of pruning them back to the ground, just prune them partway back, then you will often get multiple stems coming out from where you cut. However, when you do get multiple stems sprouting from a pruning cut like that, they tend to be weaker and sometimes don't do a good job of holding the blooms upright. At least that's been my experience.

Wow, thanks for the tip. Mine had so many blooms for about 2 months that I guess I should leave well-enough alone. I'd love to try out Everlasting Summer, though.

Ecrane3-

Thanks very much for all the info. Wish me luck on the cutting back--I hate to do it but it must be done, they are getting very overgrown, especially the 2 on the northwest side of the house.

I went bakc to Virginia's photos again and I believe I see one light blue flower??? If so, then you are correct, Virginia does not have an "Annabelle". Good luck to everyone.

Michelle, most of the info I posted here was for H. macrophylla's that bloom on old wood, if you're talking about cutting back the Annabelle you mentioned earlier then there's nothing to worry about, they bloom on new wood so you can cut them back now and still get flowers next year.

Thanks for all the advice everyone - I will prune back the stems currently flowering once this batch of flowers has died.

As to the cultivar question, I beleive it is a "H. macrophylla" (I had to cut and paste that from you, Ecrane) - It was totally blue once this year, even though this current batch only has two blue flowerheads.

Michelle - to your Pesto question; I used to grow and batch a ton of it, but work hours this year have limited me to growing tons of basil and giving it away. I grew Lemon, Lime, Ruffled Purple, and Mammoth. Most have gone to seed at this point, but I still have enough to cover the meals I'm at home for. Here's to hoping work slows down in '07!

Thanks again,
Chris

Cute house Virginia! If it were my house I'd leave the existing hydrangea, rip out those straggly cedars under the windows & plant maybe 5 Endless Summer Hydrangea. Dig up the bed first, add compost of some kind; either triple mix or sterilized manure from the garden centre or Walmart, work it in well to the existing soil & plant. Don't forget to water daily. You seem to have perfect light conditions for hydrangeas & being new to gardening, they'd be easy for you to maintain & fairly low maintenance.
As for pruning the old hydrangea I'd say to leave it till spring (April) 2007, cut off the dead bits or prune to the height you want. You want to do this before the plant makes flower buds. With how your house looks & with hydrangeas I can see a romantic look with pink & white impatiens to go with the hydrangeas so long as they're blue/mauve. Very, very pretty.

I still haven't information about deer eating hydrangeas. Do they like them or not?

Thanks for the advice Sue! I tried to reshape the Azaleas under the windows, with little success, I have never been able to prune them right.

People told me (with the Azaleas) to prune undesired branches to the ground where possible, to reshape. They were much much higher, but none of the plants have bushed out since thier pruning, they keep wanting to grow upwards. I was hoping to give them one final trim at the end of the summer and see how they did next year. I love Azaleas, and I hate to lose well established ones, but they are looking awful anemic. :)

What color do the endless summer turn, or do they stay white?

With the Azaleas I would prune more like a hedge. Where you prune them will cause them to branch out, done over a couple of years and you will get a big dense plant. Also you should only prune them right after they bloom and fertilize at the same time. I've found Milogranite works very well with azaleas.

deer love hydrangeas here....maybe its a southern thing so be careful, haha

Thanks, I'm a little bit further north than you but have a lot of deer in some areas

I was trying to prune my hydrangeas at my former home a couple years ago & just butchered them. Last summer they just glared at me & produced only a pitiful few flowerheads. I dosed them with miracid & otherwise ignored them, especially since I was packing up & moving to a smaller house. This is what I got this year, before the house sold. They were so good I almost wanted to go back!

If you want to have the same success again, the trick was probably mostly in not pruning them--I don't know which cultivar this is, but most likely it's one that blooms on old wood, so when you pruned them you cut off next year's flowers. But the year you ignored them, the old wood survived and gave you a bunch of flowers this year.

ecrane3-

Thanks for the advice on the Annabelles in my yard. I will go ahead and prune in the fall.....but say a prayer first. ;-)

Michelle