I purchased 4 Forever & Ever's yesterday and the tag says in zone 5-6 plant in sun and zone 7-8 plant in shade. I'm in zone 6b. I was wondering how well these will cope with 6 or so hrs of full sun? Any experience out there?
I have lots of Endless Summer plants and have been disappointed by them so I am hoping for a better outcome from the Forever & Ever's.
Dott
Shade or Sun?
I'd trust someone from your zone over me, but I suspect if that 6 hrs is primarily in the morning it'll be fine, but if it's a lot of afternoon sun that'll be too much for it.
People who live in the northern states can grow them in full sun conditions but people in states like Texas, California, Georgia and Florida have to grown them in morning sun / afternoon shade conditions because of the hot summers that we have. I notice that my hydrangea leaves will get sunscald if allowed to get sun past 12pm (the leaves yellow out or bleach out).
The plant label says you can do full sun but, if your summers are extra hot, if your location is windy or if your plant will get sun bounced off walls or cemented driveways, I would try for shade after 2-3pm or so.
Let us know how the Forever and Ever's do. I'm interested to see if they do better than the Endless Summer. I too am slightly disappointed with the Endless Summer. I was thinking they'd be heartier than what they are. Last year a freak frost killed the old wood buds and this year I think our winter was just too cold (at least colder than in recent past years). Maybe I'm not giving it a chance since this will only be my second full summer with them. I don't want to put the work in to protect them, there are too many of them. So, I'll just take the blooms I can get from new wood, which, has been pretty good anyhow. Good luck with the Forever and Evers.
Maybe you're confused about what Endless Summer is supposed to do? Its buds that form on old wood aren't any hardier than any other H. macrophylla so if you want blooms on old wood you're going to have to protect it. But they also bloom on new wood which is what makes them different (and is what enables people in zone 5/6 to get blooms without protection) Some people have been disappointed in its performance though, not getting as many blooms on new wood as they'd expected.
I placed them in their pots where I think I will be putting them in the future to see how well they would do. Unfortunately it has been cloudy and rainy for almost a weel but that looks to clear up in a couple of days.
I can't complain about the price since I have purchased every ES on a clearance shelf so the price was right. Also every pot I was able to get 2 plants from.
I have ES in the northern side of the house and they look great and grow nicely just not much for blooms. The ES on the NE side of the house don't bounce back from the winter's as well as I'd hoped but they do get their buds faster. Right now have 2 that are setting buds. I needed filler plants for around the house that like shade and get taller than the hosta's they are located behind but even after 3 yrs the ES aren't filling in even just with foilage.
What I would really like to have is Penny Mac but for some reason they don't sell them here but they will sell Nikko Blue by the 100's which won't bloom here with our winter's.
I'm not very up on hydrangea's an would love to get something that would fill in behind the hosta's.
Try side dressing the ES's with triple phosphate in early April for blooms. They seem to need extra phosphate to flower well. It's still not too late to feed them.