Should I prune these endless summers?

Hi, I am new to this and planted two endless summers last year. They are doing fabulous. They have so many blooms that they are falling over. All of the branches have fallen over and left a big hole in the center. There is one new shoot that is bigger than everything else filling in the hole. Should I prune it off? Should I prune any of the blooms off? I hate to cut anything off because they are so pretty but I would like to do what is best in the long run. I will post a couple of pictures. Thanks for any guidance/advice - Chris

The stem with no flowers is looking odd because, well, it has no blooms of course. The others are weighed down by the blooms and also because they are young stems that cannot support the weight, yet. The stems will harden if you do not prune them. But they will do better with the passage of time. For aesthethic reasons, you can prune the stem with no flowers but just check out first if the others would be as long and as tall were it not for the weight of the blooms. It is likely that all the stems may turn out to be of similar size and in that case, it becomes a personal question whether you trim it or not.

Regarding the question about pruning the blooms, the blooms can be deadheaded at any time. I prefer to do that when the blooms brown out. At that point, I add them back as mulch. Deadheading is not the same as pruning though. For more information on pruning, see this link: http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/pruning.html

For information on deaheading, go to the paragraph titled "Removing old blooms" in the same link. It is located at the bottom of the section titled "Method I".

Gosh, your hydrangeas are beautiful and the color is gorgeous. How lucky to have the nice blue blooms! Being in Kentucky I think you should do well with getting blooms on the old wood (next spring, buds will form on the stems you have this year and bloom summer on those same stems). And, as luis_pr says, they will get stronger as the plants mature. So, I agree that you should just sit back and enjoy your blooms this year and remove them as brown out (this may take awhile). You might consider getting Grow-Thru plant supports for next year to help support the blooms. I think I've seen them at Lowes. They work well for Hydrangea.

Hey HD28,
Forgive when I'm wrong I just got a ES (Blushing Bride) last year. but I thought the whole "new concept" of ES is that you keep taking spend flowers off and it will keep on producing new blooms... hence the name Endless Summer??? Mine did anyway. Looking bigger but also very compact. Last week I pruned off 2 huge flowers cause they were indeed dragging and damaging the branch itself. It stood in vase for about 4 days!
That funny tall shoot in the middle, does it have flower buds going if not I would trim it off, let the plant not waste any energy by going up that far. It needs the energy to make blooms. I am a fairly simple gardner and do a lot by logic.

The concept of Endless Summer is that it will bloom on both old and new growth--most macrophyllas just bloom on old wood, so if you live in a colder climate your buds will tend to freeze off and you won't get any flowers. But since the ES series blooms on new wood as well, even if the buds on old wood freeze off then you will still get blooms on new growth. If you cut off blooms early enough in the season you may get some subsequent new growth and new blooms on that new growth though but the main reason they were developed was to give gardeners in colder climates a chance to enjoy blooms without having to protect their plants over the winter.