Endless Summer Hydrangea

I'm very pleased with the performance of Endless Summer Hydrangea. One of my plants was planted in 2005 & I added another this year. I have found though that it's not exactly "endless" as when you follow the advice & snip off the faded blooms it takes a very long time for the plant to produce more flowers due to the size of the blooms.
I added 4 tsp. of aluminum sulfate to a jug of water, mixed well & watered with this brew every 2 weeks to achieve a blue/mauve colour rather than pink. In addition to that, these hydrangeas need to be well watered at least once a day; twice in hot, humid, windy weather.
As an experiment on my 2 year old plant I left 4 or 5 blooms on the plant & did not remove those as I did the others. They are constantly changing colour & are beautiful, so I don't think I'll cut-off any blooms next year.
I have one plant that gets morning sun only & the newest is in full sun. The plant that just gets morning sun only looks better as the leaves aren't scorched at all. They are somewhat scorched on the hydrangea in full sun.
In general I am very pleased with these plants. They need some staking but are disease free & no trouble at all for all you get out of them. I might add that they are planted in manure rich soil that is amended each fall/spring. Other than that I do not fertilize at all. My plants were $30.00 each but well worth it.

Very pretty! Thanks for the tip on using the aluminum sulfate mixed with the water. I'm going to try that next year!

My Endless Summer has been planted for two years. It has some blooms, but they are hidden under the foilage.

Does anyone know what would cause this? Is it just because it is not very old yet?

Deb

Are they hidden because the branches that they're on are shorter than the rest, so they're more on the interior of the shrub, or are they hidden because they droop down? If it's the latter, it's that the stems are just too weak to support the flowers. I've seen this on other hydrangeas if I pruned them partway down a branch and they sent up a couple new shoots from where I pruned, those stems tended to be smaller and weaker and couldn't always hold the blooms up, but if I pruned all the way to the base and the new shoots came up from the base, then they were strong enough.

They are hidden because the branches that they're on are shorter than the rest, so they're more on the interior of the shrub. Any advice??

I would probably prune some of the longer branches so you can see the blooms better. Endless Summer blooms on new growth, so you won't be hurting next years blooms by pruning now.

My Endless Summer was given to me. A one gallon plant and this is it's first year. Actually just planted a little over a month ago. It really is doing fantastic for being planted in the heat of the summer. I have cut 2 dead blooms off but it just keeps getting more. I think it has one open and 3 or 4 in the works.

I will say I sprayed it with Messenger twice now.