Tough Winter

[lakngulf]

My hydrangea are not looking as great this year. We had a tough winter, a few nights around 10. I did not get a chance to clip the dead heads, but that is not the problem. I have lots of limbs that are dead and dry. I hope to find some time to clip the dead wood off, but for now, it is not a pleasant sight, and will be hard for big blue blooms to overshadow the dead limbs.

Anyone else have that issue?

[pinksand]

It looks like a lot of them in my neighborhood (zone 7a) have died to the ground, only showing basal growth. Usually they're leafing out about now but all I see are dead sticks with green coming up from the base. I noticed a few people weren't patient and already removed them completely!

[lakngulf]

I have enough green growth to produce a good plant, and will get many blooms. But it will be a tedious job to trim the dead. I have some plants down near my garden, along the bank at lakeside. I use a chainsaw on them about every three years, and did so this last winter. They look GREAT, but of course will have limited blooms this year.

[rainbowgardener]

It was a tough winter for much of the US. I have a thread "it was a hard winter" about all the things that didn't make it through my winter. My hydrangea did come back, however.

[applestar]

My macrophylla is looking like Pinksand described -- all dead sticks with basal growth. I may take the opportunity to remove it like I've been wanting to do, because I want to replace it with a native hydrangea... It's never done very well here -- I think our winter is too borderline, and usually looks the way lakngulf is describing this year's hydrangea, or worse.

Plus there is a large...huge...prickly wild blackberry between the hydrangea and the fence that I haven't been able to access to dig out. And until I get rid of that mothership, new suckers will continue to pop up everywhere