I am supplying hydrangea blooms for the table arrangements at my nephew's rehearsal dinner in a little less than a month. I'm so nervous! I want them to be more gorgeous than they've ever been.
I have tons of buds and even a few already blooming, so I'm not worried abt quantity. My main problem as far as using them for arrangements is that sometimes the blooms sort of "nod" - in other words, they face downward. I find them to be very difficult to arrange when they do that.
Any advice on how to prevent that? Hope it's not too late.
Sherry
Rehearsal dinner flower jitters!
OOps. I fogot to say what kind I had. I have a Nikko Blue, a Dooley, a couple of Endless Summers and a couple of the variegated ones but can't remember their name. Also "inherited" an old unknown one when I bought this house (it's beautiful).
Can't remember for sure if all of them do the nodding thing or just particular ones, but I want to say most or all.
Sherry
Can you stick wires in the stems and use that to hold the blooms how you want them? Or wrap wire around the outside of the stems? In terms of the plant itself there's not much you can do, blooms will droop if they're too heavy for the stem they're on and at this point there's not much you can do about that. So I think a mechanical solution like the wires will be the way to go.
Hmm. I'm not sure. If it happens like last year, you can't really move the flower head up or down. It's fixed in the downward facing position.If you tried to push it up, I think it would snap off - just like if you took an upward facing flower head and tried to bend it down.
I was hoping this was a result of too much/too little of some nutrient and I might still have time to correct it.
Tomorrow I will take a good look at the current blooms and see how many appear to be like this. It never fails that the size flowerhead I need or the particular coloration I want happens to be one of the ones that nod and then it doesn't work for the arrangement. On the other hand, with 10 arrangemtns to make, maybe there will be a place for flower heads that face any which way!
Sherry
No, I think it's just a result of the stems being too weak to hold up the flowers. If they get too much nitrogen that can cause a lot of fast growth which ends up not being that strong, but there's nothing you can really do about it now since the stems and the flowers are what they are. If there are some that are just starting to droop or are still upright but you're worried about them, you might be able to try and support them and keep them more upright. Your plants might look a little silly with you propping up the blooms but that could work if they haven't already flopped over too much.
Well, maybe I am worrying for nothing. I checked them all today and no blooms are facing downward. Of course, none of the blooms are very big yet so I better not count my chickens before they hatch.
If I keep a close eye on them maybe I can figure out what is happening. I don't know where it would be getting much nitrogen. I don't fertilize my so-called "lawn" bcs it is 98% weeds so it's not getting any that way. I don't think I've ever even given it any regular fertilizer - only root stimulator, which of course, is low in ntrogen.
Do you think I *should* fertilize them? They are loaded with buds so I wasn't planning to.
Sherry
I'd leave them alone, if they've been doing well for you on your current fertilizer (or lack thereof) regimen I don't see any reason to fix something that's not broken. Other cultural conditions could come into play as well, amount of water and sunlight can have an impact on the stem growth too as well as fertilizer. But since many hydrangeas have been bred specifically for big huge blooms, even if the conditions are all perfect for the plant you can still end up with stems that aren't strong enough for the blooms. The key thing is that the stems are what they are and the plant's already budding so there's really nothing you can do from a cultural standpoint, either the stems will end up strong enough to hold the flowers up or they won't. But since you're keeping an eye on things, all you have to do is catch ones that look like they're going to flop and stake them up.
Good idea! I can use the wire trick while they're still on the shrub and hopefully steer them in the correct direction if they start going south. Thanks!