My dry, "dead" hydrangea is growing??
Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:24 am
So...a little story:
I visited my mother last summer and fell in love with her gorgeous hydrangeas. I decided I wanted some for my yard, but wasn't quite ready to dish out the money. Well, imagine my surprise when I found one growing in my backyard a few weeks later! However, I use the term "growing" pretty loosely. Had I not seen the two-inch half-head of flowers struggling to poke up out of the grass, I would have missed it. The plant was tiny, burned (from being in direct sun) and absolutely eaten up with leaf spot. I think it had even been run over a couple of times with the lawn mower. I just knew for the plant to have any chance at survival, I would need to move it. But I was taking a risk: it was mid-July (in Virginia), the worst possible time to transplant anything.
After thinking about it, I decided to go ahead with the transplant. I found a shady spot at the front of my house and moved the roots there. When I dug up the plant, I ended up with four separate root pieces with stems attached, so I planted all of them in different holes. Two of them took to the soil right away. By the end of the season, all of the leaf spot had disappeared and the plants had put out a few new stems and leaves. The plants are still tiny, but they're putting on leaf buds and look marvelously healthy. The other two stems spent the rest of the year as dry twigs. I figured I would toss them out in the spring.
Well, hello, hello! I go out to examine my hydrangeas the other day, and notice one of the "dead" plants. It still looks dry and wasted, but it's now a good 3 inches taller and doubled in diameter since the summer. It also has some flexible stems on it, though no leaf buds yet. Has anyone heard of this happening?! Is this hydrangea eventually going to bloom?! I'm new to gardening, so any knowledge or advice would be appreciated.
I visited my mother last summer and fell in love with her gorgeous hydrangeas. I decided I wanted some for my yard, but wasn't quite ready to dish out the money. Well, imagine my surprise when I found one growing in my backyard a few weeks later! However, I use the term "growing" pretty loosely. Had I not seen the two-inch half-head of flowers struggling to poke up out of the grass, I would have missed it. The plant was tiny, burned (from being in direct sun) and absolutely eaten up with leaf spot. I think it had even been run over a couple of times with the lawn mower. I just knew for the plant to have any chance at survival, I would need to move it. But I was taking a risk: it was mid-July (in Virginia), the worst possible time to transplant anything.
After thinking about it, I decided to go ahead with the transplant. I found a shady spot at the front of my house and moved the roots there. When I dug up the plant, I ended up with four separate root pieces with stems attached, so I planted all of them in different holes. Two of them took to the soil right away. By the end of the season, all of the leaf spot had disappeared and the plants had put out a few new stems and leaves. The plants are still tiny, but they're putting on leaf buds and look marvelously healthy. The other two stems spent the rest of the year as dry twigs. I figured I would toss them out in the spring.
Well, hello, hello! I go out to examine my hydrangeas the other day, and notice one of the "dead" plants. It still looks dry and wasted, but it's now a good 3 inches taller and doubled in diameter since the summer. It also has some flexible stems on it, though no leaf buds yet. Has anyone heard of this happening?! Is this hydrangea eventually going to bloom?! I'm new to gardening, so any knowledge or advice would be appreciated.