I have a few variegated lacecap hydrangea's and would like to know whether to deadhead the spent blooms on them. If so, would I cut back to a pair leaves? Will they flower again this year? I'm guessing I should be fertilizing now that they have finished blooming too.
Deadhead or Not?
Unless they're a reblooming type (I can't think of any lacecaps that are, but there may be ones I'm not aware of) then it won't do any good, they bloom on old wood so what you have now is all you get until next year. I'm not even sure if deadheading at this point would give you new blooms on a rebloomer, but with one that's not a rebloomer there's definitely no chance.
Hmmmm, I didn't think they would re-bloom but I thought I should deadhead because they look so untidy with lots of new leaves growing taller than the old blooms. I should fertilize now for next year though, right?
Sorry, I thought you wanted to deadhead to get more blooms. You can certainly remove the old blooms if you want, that won't hurt the plant any, it just won't stimulate it to bloom again. I'll let someone else answer you on the fertilizer part--I am absolutely terrible with fertilizing, I hardly ever fertilize anything that's not in a container so I have no idea what the right time of year would be.
LOL, thanks ecrane. Normally I'm hopeless about fetilizing as well and my plants suffer because of it. This year I'm trying to be more "on to it". :-)
Fortunately my plants haven't punished me for my negligence yet! Once they do, I'm sure I'll get my act together and figure out the fertilizing thing, but until then I plan to be lazy!