Help with understanding my hydrangea please

[Cdhjort]

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i have always wanted a blue hydrangea like my grandmothers, so I bought one abut 3 weeks ago. It's the "endless summer kind" and I bought a 3 quart one. The soil in our place is wierd (some things do get and in one bed nothing survives.) seems silty. So I filled the hole with great compost and recommended booster soil. I was gone a week and had the neighbor wTer the hydrangea since I'd just transplanted it a week earlier. But now it's not looking great. I'm Worried it's failing but maybe it's just a normal dying of the blooms. But some leaves near ground are yellowing. Is it too much water? Not enough? Too much sun (it gets abt 3-4 hrs direct but it's midday) the rest is shaded. I really want to see this lovely plant survive and I'd take any insight! Thx!

[luis_pr]

Hello, Cdhjort. You did not specify where are you and what zone you are in so, I am guessing a little here.

When you plant a shrub in your garden, it goes thru what called "transplant shock". Up to that point, it has been coddled by the wholesaler that grew the plant and then by the nursery. They all watered and exposed it to ideal conditions so it would be for sale at the right time and with nice blooms (usually earlier than normal).

Complicating things a bit, you are planting the shrub in the middle of the summer so the plant looks fine for a plant that has been planted in the Summer..

* blooms - hydrangea blooms go thru a plethora of color changes as they get older. Yours started blue and will in time get some pink and green colors, eventually ending in plain brown. Due to a combination of issues like summer weather, lack of soil moisture and lack of mulch, the plant may decide to abort these blooms early and go from blue directly to brown (or 'not' and the blooms will go thru those color changes).

* more blooms - depending on where you are located, ES blooms several times. All hydrangeas typically develop invisible flower buds at the end of the stems in July-August and these buds open in the Spring. Hydrangeas like ES will also develop flower buds again, around the Summer months or in early Fall. Exactly when will vary so, see what your plant does in a typical year.

* blue blooms - to get blue blooms, your soil has to be acidic and contain some aluminum. If not, you may want to amend the soil with products like aluminum sulfate, greensand or iron-chelated liquid compounds (sold at most plant nurseries). Your blooms are blue because the potting soil is acidic and contains some aluminum. As the roots begin to grow into your garden soil, the shade of blue can change to reflect how acidic the soil is and how much aluminum the plant gets off your soil. If you notice that the blooms are turning pink, you probably have alkaline soil. Your plant nursery can help you determine if your soil is acidic or not.

* spent blooms - once the blooms have browned out, decide whether you want to keep them. Some people leave them thru all winter for winter interest. With ES, deadheading of blooms can trigger new blooms faster so consider cutting the bloom's petiole. Do not cut the stem; instead cut the little "string" that connects the stem to the bloom (it is called a petiole). At some point in the Fall, the plant will cease to produce new bloomage and will begin to shutdown for winter.

* water - hydrangeas like evenly moist, well draining, acidic soil so, try to provide that as best as you can. Adding 2-4" of mulch up to the drip line will protect the roots from temperature swings and help keep the soil moist longer. Insert a finger into the soil to a depth of 4" and water if the soil feels dry or almost dry. Give ES 1 gallon of water in the Spring and 1.5 gallons of water in the Summer. Reduce the amount of water back to 1 gallon once Fall temperatures arrive. Use 50% more water if your soil is sandy.

Once the plant goes dormant in the Fall, you can reduce waterings to once a week or once every two weeks, stopping all waterings if the soil in your area freezes.

* leaves - Summer in Year 1 is always the worst one for these new 'kids' on the block so regularly visit it to see how it is doing. Wilting occurs when it is hot and the plant looses water thru the leaves faster than it can replace it by absorbing water thru the roots. In the first few years, wilting can occur often because the root system was pruned (so the plant could fit on the plastic pot). As the plant grows a larger root system in future years, these wilting episodes will be reduced although in very hot areas of the South they may not be completely eliminated. ES should be established in your garden anywhere from 1-3 years. Until then, do this when you see wilting: insert a finger into the soil (not counting the mulch) to a depth of 4" and see if the soil is moist or wet. If moist or wet, do nothing: the plant will recover on its own by night time or by the next morning. If the soil is dry or feels almost dry then give it 1.5 gallons of water.

Always water the soil early in the mornings. Do n-o-t water the leaves if you can help it; this minimizes the chances of getting leaf fungal diseases.

Hydrangeas also react to very hot or unusually hot weather by aborting some leaves. That means yellowing and dropping leaves so there is enough water to spread around. Again, mulch will help with this. Enough water (1.5 gallons) per waterings will also help. But the plant is not used to being outside in the garden so expect some leaves to yellow out and fall in Year 1.

If you notice that the leaves are browning from the edges inwards, the plant needs (more) water. Leaves that brown out or yellow out will not get green again but, depending on what month this happens, the plant could de3velop new foliage. Just not in the middle of the Summer.

* Anything that happens on Year 1 is atypical. Your plant may bloom early, or late, and it may behave in ways that differ from what it will do in future years. Like I said earlier, it was coddled to produce maximum impact by the time it was for sale. By year 3 for sure, it should do things like bloom and leaf out at, what you can call, its correct/proper time.

Other things to consider:

* I am not sure where you are located but hydrangeas prefer dappled sun or morning sun & afternoon shade (no evening sun).

* Stems may not be able to hold blooms straight up in the Summer at first. But if your stems survive your winters, they will older and more capable to hold blooms without bending or flopping. Water and less heat are the solutions sometimes.

* Some people cut off all blooms in Year 1 to force the plant to devote all energies to produce a larger root system but, sigh, I usually do not do this since the blooms is why I bought the plant in the first place. Just a fyi.

* Winter protection - in zones colder than 7, you may need to winter protect if you want to get the early Spring bloomage that ES produces. What happens is that the stems do not survive winter and they dry out; in that case, prune all dried out looking stems in mid-to-late May if they have not leafed out by then. By doing this, you will loose all the July-August flower buds but they are dead anyways and ES should generate new stems, new leaves and new flower buds. If that happens, all new growth will originate from the crown of the plant. New flower buds will eventually develop but they will open much later, like in the Summer.

But using winter protection, you will hopefully get earlier bloomage. You can add winter protection in the Fall when the plant goes dormant and remove it maybe 2 weeks after your average date of last frost in Spring.

[Cdhjort]

Thank you so much for that helpful
Info! I live in the pacific nw USA (Seattle to be exact.) so winters aren't particularly harsh but wet. Hydrangeas tend to do well around here so I won't give up on it but see what happens over the year and continue to water it (is it possible to over water a hydrangea?)

[AnnaIkona]

Maybe your neighbor watered the blooms themselves. Don't do this as the flowers don't like getting wet.

Other than that, I think it's just mild transplant shock.

[luis_pr]

Or maybe it happened at the plant nursery. Some of my local nurseries tend to cluster the hydrangea pots close together so they can easily water them via overhead waterings. Sometimes, I can even feel the high humidity by just walking around the pots.

[nltaff]

luis_pr, Great info on hydrangea. Quick question, those stems that bend and can't support the blooms...why would a PeeGee not be able to support prolific blooms at 4-5 years of age? It was planted where it got morning to 2or 3pm sun (apparently PeeGee likes more sun) and it grew to 4' high, 4-5' diameter. Consistently each year, it produced more and more stems and blooms, but they all drooped to the ground. The old wood just never got sturdy enough to hold the huge blooms.

[luis_pr]

How odd. and unexpected. Let me think about it and get back to you. Need to return to work and work late. Can you post a picture?

[luis_pr]

4 years is still young and PGs can be floppers for quite a few years:
http://search.millcreeknursery.ca/11050 ... _Hydrangea

In your case, the shrub still needs assistance until the wood has hardened enough to stand on its own. Consider using a 4-5ft tall metal stake or using a fence post that is 1ft under the ground or more, and then use some wire ties to hold the trunk upright. The stems more in the center will tend to grow straight up; the others will tend to bend and flop and theeen grow up. Depending on how wide it is, you may want to stake in the Fall when the leaves have dried out and you can get a better view of the stem skeleton.

Also, do not prune the ends of the stems as this type of pruning produces more branches and blooms per stem (more weight for the main stem) and if you get too many blooms in one stem, the stem flops or the largest blooms can snap if windy.

The flopping problem is a bit surprising since PGs are typically sold in tree form. I have seen them as short trees in many places in MASS and NH. So, you would think that the plant produces strong stems. And it eventually does but at first, stems tend to fall on each other. Eventually they look straight but sometimes they are resting on top of other stems.

Another alternative is to stake and also look at the stems that you have now; cut the shortest ones all the way down or cut the worst floppers, leaving the strongest.

[nltaff]

I planted the shrub in a bit of a small space, about 4 ft from the foundation of my house. For about 3 years, I waited for the stems to harden, but each successive year, they continued to leaf out and produce one big bloom at the end of each stem. I never cut them. As you can imagine, once the flower heads formed, the stems promptly bent over, with the outermost lying on the ground. This left a gap in the mound of bush about 3/4 up the overall 4' height of the shrub. Also, every year, the leaves would be pretty and green until the weather got really warm and then they became heavily spotted, completely covered with little browning dots (very perfectly round dots). It didn't seem to be a fungus, maybe a mite, but since I didn't know what it was, I never treated it with anything. Then I tried to prune it to a single trunk, but you can imagine how unsightly that became. When I discovered that many of the stems lying on the ground had rooted, I decided that PeeGee offspring could survive elsewhere on my property and the mother plant had to go (at this point, too big to dig up). Last fall, I cut the whole thing off at about 4-6" from the ground. It has been sending up a shoot, here and there. I can take a picture later (dark now). I'm trying to root them. I'm sure there's a place here, for PeeGee, but I've sadly concluded it is not 4' from the house.

[luis_pr]

Your description sounds a lot like the shrub above. The stems fell one on top of another and obviously, it becomes more pronounced when the weight of the blooms is added. Then the very top takes a while to cover and until then, there is a spot that looks like a hole at the top. Pruning and thining is an annual chore with PG. Similar to what happens with H. arborescens Annabelle. Limelight may be a better choice if you do not want all this work. Both PG and Limelight can be pruned down to a single stem to create a tree-form PG (although I am lazy and would probably have someone do the hard work on the first few years and I would buy the tree PG or tree Limelight at the nursery. But make sure that the stems look strong or you could end up with this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/56 ... 4033a1.jpg

The leaf spots are very common and are now becoming visible on some of my old hydrangeas. If it is the problem that I am thinking of, the holes are concentric, turn shades of brown and maybe yellow and purplish at times too. The affected lesions sometimes destroy the foliage and you end up with holes where the leaf spot used to be.

The proper name of this fungal disease is Cercospora Leaf Spot and it is everywhere. Overhead watering contributes greatly to it. I could not do much for the existing hydrangeas in the house at first but, when the sprinkler system died, I changed to drip irrigation around them and it has minimized the problem on both, the old hydrangeas that came with the house and my new ones. You cannot cure this so, try to minimize it:

Have fun with all those plants that you ended up with! Or find a gardening club or society that is having a plant sale, pot the plants and give the plants to them.

http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1212/ANR-1212.pdf

[nltaff]

What you are saying makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure the first few years of this plant's life were some of the rainiest I can remember here. To add insult to injury, the hydrangea is in a location that takes runoff from the roof. I'll definitely get out there and take a pic of that stump today. This has been an incredibly dry year up until this week, and the few new shoots from the stump have spotless leaves (except for the large absences of leaf sections eaten by slugs). I'll have to check on the terribly misshapen self rooted hydrangea I moved out to a rather wild area. Thanks for the info.

[nltaff]

Thanks again, luis, your info and advice has been helpful. Based upon these photos, I'm not willing to write this plant off completely, and I do so love the prolific blooms it produces. I just need to find a spot on my property where it can flourish.

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[luis_pr]

Maybe it is too early for the spots. I noticed that my hydrangea which typically shows the leaf spots has begun doing so. It is limited though. Just one lesion in those leaves that have them. It used to be worse when I first bought the house.

Your photos took me back to a time when I found a tiny hydrangea growing in the yard. I was surprised. Then I was surprised when it disappeared again. Ha! I think the dogs may have run over it or who knows ???