Quickfire hydrangea pruning how to#
Quickfire hydrangea pruning update#
Quickfire hydrangea pruning series#

If you are finding them too big, now is NOT the time to cut them back. I really like them in the 5-foot range and tried to give them as much space as I could in my customers’ gardens. They take a few years to get going but once they do they can crowd out other plants. The dwarf varieties grow about 3 ft- 4 ft and bloom midsummer right through until the fall.Ģ) My hydrangeas are too big! This is a common problem with Limelight Hydrangea or Hydrangea paniculata. Little Lime, Little Quickfire and Bobo have really filled that spot for me in the garden, left by my Endless Summer variety. The good news is since this original post, several new dwarf varieties of the paniculata hydrangea have been released. The few I find growing nicely in other peoples garden I enjoy, longingly from a distance but I personally found them too much effort for the results I was having. I decided to remove the macrophylla varieties from my garden and for the most part, I no longer use them in my designs.

As I strive for a low maintenance garden and my goal is to help my clients achieve that as well.

Quickfire hydrangea pruning update#

I wanted to update everyone regarding my nonblooming hydrangea dilemma. Any takers? I am curious to hear how your Endless Summers are doing (please post in the ‘Comment’ section below). I am not going to do that! Digging them up and giving them away may be another option for me. Here is a link I found where others have wrapped their hydrangeas with Saran Wrap for the winter. Yes, I am impatient and like most of you, I want a low maintenance garden. Although I am not sure what I am going to do about it as I don’t want to go another summer with no blooms. That coupled with my over fertilizing could be the problem. Even with the old wood not touched in the spring, it is exposed to elements and therefore the buds could have frozen preventing it from blooming. Lastly is winter protection and late frosts. I have been really good at this so I know this isn’t my problem. Even in early spring, leave the “dead” looking stems alone so that the plant can grow and bloom from the “old” wood. These plants really just need deadheading and shouldn’t need any hard pruning. Like mine here:Īnother reason for no blooms is pruning at the wrong time. Too much fertilizing means your plants will grow nice and big and leafy but no blooms. In fact, after even more research, I think it’s contributing to the problem. I have researched this in the past and concluded that I needed to fertilize them more but unfortunately, this hasn’t helped me. Here are some common problems and what you can do about them.ġ) Hydrangeas not blooming: This seems to be the number one problem people have with their hydrangeas, including me! The most common hydrangeas that have blooming issues are in the Macrophylla family or primarily the Endless Summer Hydrangeas. paniculata Bobo, and Little Quickfire.I love hydrangeas! I put them all in my garden but when they don’t work it can be frustrating.

Quickfire hydrangea pruning series#

(Country Garden has several in that series in stock now.) Other hydrangeas that stay shorter are the Cityline series, Let’s Dance Diva, H. For example, most shrubs in the Seaside Serenade® series of Monrovia hydrangeas stay under 4 feet tall. Every year there are dozens of shorter growing hydrangeas being introduced.

Quickfire hydrangea pruning how to#

So how to keep a hydrangea under the windows, away from the walkway, or short enough to see over? Plant a short variety in that spot. If a hydrangea is up over the windows, move it to another location where it can grow as large as its genetics are dictating that it will be. The plant will produce new growth, but for a very short time you’ll have the passageways clear. If just a few stems are hanging into walkways, follow those to the ground or where they join another stem, and cut them off. If your hydrangea is too wide for the location, you can dig it up and divide the plant, or move it back away from driveways and walks. This is how the original “hydrangea trees” were formed…by cutting off the lower limbs where they joined the trunk to create what looks like a multi-stemmed small tree.

In the past when this plant grew too tall and wide, homeowners pruned them from the bottom up, turning them into small trees.

The fast growth that a hard pruning stimulates is weaker growth, and plants usually are more floppy the year or two after such pruning. And since those long canes were now new growth, the heavy flowers bent them to the ground whenever it rained. The canes on this particular plant were cut down by half in the spring and when this photo was taken in late August those canes were just as long as they were the year before. This is a Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ – aka a peegee (or PG) hydrangea.