We planted a tree-form tardiva early last summer. It's about 5 ft. tall and had a nice crown. It's on the northeast side of the house and gets some morning sun. It's in exactly the spot our landscape designer planned for us to put it. We only paid $40 for it but now I think I know why! Most of the stems that grew last year are curved...kind if like a "smiley face"! They come off the larger "normal" branch facing downward toward the ground and then curve upward to face the sun. It's kind of silly looking but of course I have no idea how to prune this thing. Until I find out what to do with it, it's going to remain silly looking. It's right in the front of the house...the neighbors will have a laugh!
Anyone have any ideas on either why the shoots do this, or how to fix it, or how to prune a tree-form hydrangea. Remember we've already got it as a tree-form so we don't need to train it to a single stem. We just need to know what to do with the spent blooms and the "crooked" stems.
Tree-Form Hydrangea
Can you post a picture? 'Tardiva' is not a weeping plant so its branches are naturally going to want to go up, so I think the key is to find out why they were bending down in the first place and fix that, then it should grow normally and look fine. It could be that the branches were small and weak and couldn't support the weight of the flowers last year so they got bent down, and now they're trying to grow back the way they naturally want to be? Or maybe the branches had been allowed to grow too long, again this could cause them to get dragged down by the weight of the flowers, keeping the branches shorter should make this better. I hesitate to advise you on how to prune to fix this without seeing a picture.
Thanks once again ecrane 3. My husband just said we had to get a camera to be able to post photos.
Amazingly, you seemed to have gotten the "picture" on this tree form tardiva...you described the problem pretty well. Realizing that the slender branches "swoop" and then have a flower head at the end, where the heck would we prune it. Any ideas?
I have the regular tardiva and never had any problems with the branches weeping. I do have a Pee Wee - very similar to Pee Gee that did that. I was able to prune away some of the old stems that did that and got a good central leader that behaved properly.
Al
The biggest thing to avoid with pruning is cutting any of these "smiley" branches partway down the branch--this will stimulate new growth where you cut, and you will get several small spindly branches coming off from where you cut and these will almost definitely do the same thing that you're seeing now, just there'll be more of them so it'll look even sillier. If some branches are doing the smiley thing but others are going upright like they're supposed to, I would leave the upright ones alone and prune out the smiley ones (prune all the way back to the main branch/trunk) If they're all smiley (or the majority of them), then I would cut back ~1/3 of them all the way to the base, hopefully the new shoots that grow in to replace those will stay upright, then next year you can cut back another 1/3 of the smiley branches, then 1/3 the following year. I would also avoid using fertilizer that's high in nitrogen--this will encourage lots of green growth and will tend to give you longer, skinnier branches which will cause the problem to come back
Thanks All! I think you've uncovered one of the problems....there is no leader! We'll have to train a branch to "grow up and be a leader"! I'm getting a better sense of how to prune this thing based on responses so we're very grateful. As I said originally, it was very inexpensive and now we know why!!!
We'll keep you posted on this "wayward tardiva".