my only hydrangea

hi this is my first time on this forum , im usually on the rose forum . i really love hydrangeas though . this is my pride and joy this year . we lived here for 3 yrs and i have only ever seen 2 blooms on this . so i removed alot of dead wood , about half the sticks. and fed it and have been giving it coffe grounds , now its full of blooms ! my next venture is gonna be turning it blue . its very old . and when its naked it looks like 3 plants , i mean there is a division when you look down at the ground . do they divide like that when they have been there for a long time ?

another shot

here is the front , next to a gigantic azalea i wont let my dh prune it :)

Mopheads develop a crown at the base, with the passage of time. Some people then divide the crown to produce two or three distinct plants. Perhaps that is what you are seeing. For more information on hydrangeas, visit this link when you have time:

www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com

Note: turning blooms from pink blue requires taking steps that help the plant increase its aluminum intake. To accomplish that, most people add an ammendment called aluminum sulphate. However, you may want to try acidifying the soil with garden sulphur & using fertilizers with low phosphates instead because aluminum -in enough quantity- will become toxic and will kill the azalea growing besides the hydrangea. An example of one such fertilizer that you could use is an organic one called cottonseed meal.

i wondered about that . the azalea i mean , i knew about the aluminum but i havnt done it because i didnt know enough about what it would do to the plants in the vicinity . when i was at the nursery yesterday i thought i might just buy a blue one and see if i can keep it blue , in a spot where it wont hurt anything , alot of people here have blue ones ,( that are turning pink because the soil is leaching i guess) . they only had endless summer , but i heard that one isnt all its cracked up to be whats your take .

There were some people who felt like Endless Summer wasn't blooming as well on new wood as it ought to. However, a year later some of those same people are getting tons of blooms from it, so it's very possible it was just an issue that the plant takes a year or two to get established before it really puts on a good show. Many shrubs take a couple years to really get going so that wouldn't be all that unusual.

If your hydrangea blooms on old wood, it may be creating flower buds for next spring starting some time in August or September so do not fertilize beginning in August and do not prune starting then either. The first suggestion makes sure that the plant goes dormant by the time winter starts. The second suggestion makes sure that flower buds will not be damaged by winter and will not be pruned away.

i made sure only to take the loose wood out , it only had 2 blooms last summer dont ask me why i never touched it

It may require winter protection techniques, meaning the hydrangea may not be good in your zone 6a. Hydrangeas like this will grow new stems from the base every year if the existing stems are not protected. The old stems that do make it bloom for you but the other dry out and have no bloomage. To know for sure, you would either need to know excatly what variety this hydrangea is or you would have to protect it next winter in order to see if it comes back with oodles of blooms.