 Hi everybody, let's talk about hydrangeas. It's a beautiful shrub and there's lots of new cultivars coming out now. But growing hydrangeas can be a little bit confusing. Some bloom on new wood, some bloom on old wood. Some can have blue flowers and some can't. Some can tolerate shade better than others. So here to demystify hydrangeas and show us some of the best cultivars and how to take care of them is Astromaginus and extension horticultures from NDSU. Astr, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. Now when Tom asked me to give this talk, I have to admit I was a little reticent. I really was because you know we have Todd West that does actual research trials on hydrangeas and I usually focus more on perennials, so herbaceous perennials. But then I started to think, you know, what can I offer our viewing audience? And then I realized I had a personal story and a personal journey concerning hydrangeas that I could share with our audience and I realized that like a lot of our gardeners I had fallen for the allure of a blue hydrangea. Now what I can offer our listeners is group therapy because I can imagine there are a lot of you that have fallen for blue hydrangeas and have been sorely disappointed. So we should all form a group therapy group and we can share share our stories and such. But my story started with Nico blue and this was when I was in my late 20s. My husband and I had I had constructed a new home and we had a blank slate that we could landscape. So I didn't know anything about horticulture at the time. So I drove to our our closest big box store and loaded up my trunk with all sorts of shrubs and stuff and in the store I fell in love with this beautiful blue hydrangea. You know it was blooming like crazy. It had that lovely blue that was like a robin's egg and I knew I had to have that plant and I was going to put it in a place of prominence. It was going to go in my front garden right by the front door and everybody would have to walk by this beautiful Nico blue hydrangea. Now the first year it did really well and then we had winter and I was dreaming about blue flowers for summer. But what happened? You know the snow melted and I realized that my new blue hydrangea had winter damage. I could see that the stems had died back and such. So I did trim off the dead ends and I thought well maybe it can bounce back. Well no flowers that first summer. I was like well it's just getting established. I'll wait till next year. Nothing. Year three absolutely no flowers whatsoever. So at that point in time I learned a new concept. Plant hardiness zones and I learned Nico blue was hardy to zone five. So a tough lesson to learn as a young homeowner that I had bought something that was not hardy to my zone. So I got a little bit I'm a little bit more creative started doing more research and such. And then I learned about endless summer. So and the summer was released in 2003 2004 somewhere in that time frame and it was sold as really the holy grail for Minnesota and the north country that we could actually plant a hydrangea that would produce blue flowers and it would be hardy and it would be glorious. So I'm I'm sure a lot of you bought into this. So I planted it. I followed the instructions from the nursery. You know they told me to acidify the soil. I can't remember if I used aluminum sulfate or sulfur. I did that. I added peat to the bottom of my planting hole and then I waited. So that first year I did have blue flowers. The next year came and I noticed the flowers were no longer blue. They were kind of a nice shade of purple and I was like well I do like purple. It's one of my favorite colors. I can live with purple. But the following year um The following year it was pink but I've I've learned a lot about hydrangea and this this wonderful endless summer Had a unique story. So the unique story with endless summer is that it really was a Niko blue and the Niko blue had a mutation in a gardener's A landscape Now it so happened this gardener lived in the twin cities And he lived next door to a plant breeder or somebody that worked at a nursery So this this neighbor was astute and noticed that this Niko blue Performed beyond expectations. So he noticed that With with this one it it didn't just survive. It thrived and produced these beautiful flowers So that that became endless summer And what was so special about endless summer is that it flowered on both new wood and old wood But let's define those terms. Let's just slow it down here for a second so with um With old wood the flower buds are induced and initiated by Um by environmental conditions, you know changing photo period changing temperatures in late summer And then those flower buds stayed on the stem all winter and then they bloom the following year But I bet you our readers can imagine that things can go wrong with old wood as you can imagine those flower buds are um exposed to winter temperatures and um They're also exposed to late frosts in april and early may So the problem with our the old Niko blue is that it flowered on old wood And then was not able to survive, you know all those late spring frost Now we have shrubs that have that flower on new wood Now with new wood the flower buds are initiated the year that it actually blooms and it blooms on the newer growth the newer twigs Now that's um now that has some advantages because it's not going to be exposed to winter temperatures So endless summer Endless summer was sold as blooming on both new and old wood So we all assumed that this was going to be a great product But as I mentioned I planted it in my garden year one it was blue The second year it was purple and by the third year I had pink blooms So what was going on there? It has to do with soil pH Now when we have a more acidic soil um These hydrangeas will flower blue now if you have a more alkaline soil it will flower pink So what happened with my plant? I did try and acidify the soil But I ran a soil test Where I lived and found out that my soil pH was closer to 8.0 A real alkaline soil, you know on the south side of the twin cities In fact, it's really not that much different than my soil here in fargo But I could not maintain that blue color no matter how much soil acidifier I had put in no matter What fertilizer I used I could not keep it because the soil resisted the changes and was able to buffer that And then in addition with my endless summer I found that I didn't have a whole lot of blooms Instead of having a whole season's worth of blooms I didn't have any blooms on the old wood because the buds were frozen off And then it did bloom on new wood, but it was more towards the end of the season You know I'd get two or three blooms and then fall would come So I I experienced a lot of disappointment Now since then I've learned a lot about hydrangeas and we have Typically three different species that we grow So hydrangea macrophila or big leaf hydrangea. This is the species that endless summer is in You know as I mentioned you get you know somewhere on on the the scale between pink and blue as far as flowers You can have different flower heads the mop head is more globe-shaped The lace cap is more flat And the coloration depends on the soil pH Now most of our big leaf hydrangeas are hardy to zone five or higher Not not the zones we have in north dakota Now of all the big leaf hydrangeas the endless summer series is the heartiest of the bunch and the plant will thrive And I found that it was it was quite beautiful as far as its foliage However, just because a plant is hardy doesn't mean that you're going to have prolific blooms So I I really didn't have liable flowering on my plant But I also learned that as I did more research on it people that live in more southern states We're talking Illinois, you know, Iowa, Ohio. They have the same complaints So how can we be expected to have great success? Um with endless summer in the north country if they're having problems in chicago Now, of course, there are going to be a few individuals that are going to say Oh, my endless summer has done wonderfully here in north dakota But it's most likely a shrub that has been planted in a very protected microclimate And and the homeowner may have taken great care to mulch the plant to try and preserve some of the old wood and those those buds on it You know, in addition, they tried to give it the right conditions, which would have been part shade and moist soils Now I've learned a lot. Um now before I went back for my horticulture degree Um I started learning about anabell hydrangea now anabell hydrangea is is absolutely beautiful We'll see we've got the white blooms on the right hand side of this picture And it's in a different species. It's in hydrangea arborescence Otherwise known as smooth hydrangea Now what's typical for this species is that you will see a globe shaped flower head So think a nice rounded dome And fortunately the species as a whole is a whole lot heartier Now it tends to get larger than our endless summers Because it is hearty it'll grow to be about three to four feet tall and wide It will also bloom earlier in the season starting in june Now the oldest cultivar in this species is anabell released around 1910 in its named after Anna Illinois Now it's a it's a solid plant. I had it absolutely loved it, but it did have a couple of flaws The flower heads are quite large and they tend to weigh down the stems So you'll notice that it has a tendency for the stems to lodge In addition, you'll notice that the plant will succor and and go beyond the three to four feet in width So I found that with anabell hydrangeas I had to stake them And then in the spring I also had to cut off the suckers to try and maintain a more compact size Now fortunately we have newer cultivars on the market Um incredible is one of them and this has gotten a lot of publicity Was bred to have sturdier stems But they found that in the process of breeding the shrub to have sturdier stems The flower heads actually got bigger So the claim to fame is that incredible is not supposed to flop However in talking with Todd West, he's not totally happy with the sturdiness of the stems But it is still far better than anabell as far as that There's another introduction in the incredible series called incredible blush And you'll notice that it's this nice light pink But once again look at the size of that that inflorescence or flower head It's really almost like a basketball as far as the size Now we don't have data on this But incredible blush is supposed to have slightly Sturdier stems So I would be more inclined to purchase an incredible blush than incredible You know based on stem sturdiness Now others that are Within the same species we're seeing a lot of invincibles on the market Invincible spirit one Uh, that was kind of a mediocre invincible spirit two seems to be better You'll notice that you know the buds come out It's red then they open to pink And eventually the the plant will transition to to green in the fall Um, there's invincible ruby. So invincible is the newest one Um, you'll have a two-toned flower with ruby red and then kind of a silvery pink to it Now I've yet to see my first invincible ruby. This is one of the newer ones I think there are a couple more invincibles that are hitting the market now So these are some of the newest cultivars and we're still kind of learning about them and how they do in our landscape Now keep in mind now with any of these smooth hydrangeas, none of them can be blue So the best we can do is pink or or red Now our third species Hydrangea paniculata or panicle hydrangea And you'll you can easily identify these So look at the flowers and the flowers will be cone shaped or cure middle So you'll see a distinct point on them So that's the easiest way to tell a panicle hydrangea Remember the smooth hydrangea was more dome shape Panicle hydrangea is largely hardy to North Dakota. It does bloom later than our smooth hydrangeas And it really depends on the cultivar We'll talk about different cultivars and their bloom times as we proceed Now the oldest cultivar Is pg hydrangea and i'm sure our listeners have heard of pg hydrangea Now this is Is quite a large plant. We're talking a height of 8 feet tall by 10 feet wide So a very large specimen plant probably not suitable as a foundation planting Now like anabelle the older cultivar did have a tendency to flop because it produced those large flower heads Now with panicle hydrangea they're known for changing colors, you know, they start off white and then they turn In this case with pg hydrangea turns salmon colored in the fall So you do have kind of a nice fall coloration and then we'll talk about pruning here in in a couple minutes This is hydrangea paniculata, but once again you can see the flower heads coming to a point So I believe this one is a pg cultivar Now we're going to talk about newer cultivars that are on the market We're going to talk about three series in each of these series It's kind of interesting where you've got a really tall shrub or if you want you can choose a more compact related shrub The first one is quick fire And as its name suggests it's an early bloomer So it's the first of the the major panicle hydrangeas to bloom. It'll start to bloom You know in mid to late june here in north dakota Now all the panicle hydrangeas take more sun than Than our big leaf hydrangea So you'll notice on the tag they say fold to part sun We'll talk a little explain that just a little bit more. It does impact the color of the petals Now with quick fire it starts off white and then you see it has kind of this little, you know, these little Individual flowers here that are clustered together, but not as densely as some of the other cultivars And then the flowers turn deep pink And then towards fall they're going to start to turn brown Now you can elongate the time that the individual petals stay pink By planting it in part sun as opposed to full sun. So we're finding that part sun is a little bit more advantageous So you want to make sure it has enough sun to photosynthesize and produce flowers But it's not so much that it dries out the petals So quick fire is going to be six to eight feet tall four to six feet wide Now for its smaller sibling little quick fire So this is more suitable for a foundation planting three to five feet tall three to five feet wide And it does bloom it around the same time as as its larger counterpart Vanilla strawberry I think this is probably the most popular of our panicle hydrangeas at least at least from what I can tell in our nurseries Now this one is zone three hardy And this is the taller version six to seven feet tall, but a little bit narrower This will bloom at a little bit later than our quick fire series some more more in july Now the flowers are really interesting They do start off white transition to pink and then to a strawberry red But it will continue to initiate flowers throughout the rest of the growing season So you will see quite a bit of variety on the same plant You'll see some flowers that are white some that are pink some that are red Which really is kind of a nice characteristic However, the stems Do flop a bit So that's one drawback, but some people like it. It does give it a little bit of a weeping look to it But here you can see the variation, you know from from white To to that nice strawberry red and the pollinators seem to enjoy it too It's smaller counterpart is strawberry sundae. It has a lot of the same Attributes to it, but smaller in stature And then for our final series our final series is lime So we have limelight is the larger of the two. This is a little bit more unique The flowers start off lime colored and then transition to pink and then burgundy as the season progresses Now of the three series this will bloom the latest Now this will you know kind of the same type of effect as far as where to plant You know this Panicles do take a little bit more sun than than others But this is the taller of the two in the lime series Now fortunately lime light is known for having stronger stems So it's not going to droop in the same way that strawberry sundae or vanilla strawberry does Now here's a nice plant of it showing its coloration And then little lime is going to be the more compact version Now I wanted to say a word on pruning, you know before I take questions Pruning is really going to depend on you knowing the species and what kind of hydrangea you have It's a little bit different for for each of them Now first you've got your smooth hydrangeas now with the older cult of our annabelle This blooms on new wood and now you understand what it means to bloom on new wood Now with annabelle, you know, I have quite a bit of personal experience with this You just want to chop it to the ground in late march or early april The alternative is that you can do this in the fall Um Now I've tried to leave it up over the winter But I found that kind of the flower head does kind of blow away in winter So it doesn't have a whole lot of winter interest So you can pick your time to do it, but it will bloom More uniformly and have larger flowers if you cut cut it off to the ground Now the newer cultivars that are smooth hydrangeas have different advice They tell you to cut them back by one third in the spring cut them back to a live bud They will supposedly have stronger stems if you don't cut the newer cultivars all the way to the ground So just cut them back by a third You want to have a little bit older stem the stem will lignify or become a little bit more wooden And will give strength to the stem So treat the old cultivars differently than the new Then there's hydrangea macrophila as I mentioned Which has hardiness issues You'll find that this is never going to get to the point where you really need to severely prune it because it's gotten too big You're not going to have that problem. You're going to find that winter takes care of it for you So all you need to do is remove The dead stems And then if you have stems that are surviving you cut it back to a live bud So not a whole lot that you need to do there Hydrangea paniculata This blooms on new wood now don't Don't prune the whole thing to the ground We do have a couple of strategies that are suggested for a paniculata Now for a larger plant You know you take off any of the dead branches and then you cut off the spent flowers and a little bit of the stem You know, maybe a quarter a quarter of the stem in early spring, of course going back to that live bud We'll find that that will spur That will spur development from a sturdier part of the stem And that contributes to having a little bit more more strength to hold up the flower Now over time you may find that you need to rejuvenate your panicle hydrangea I mean, you know, this is the case if you have too many stems And you're finding that your flower heads are getting a little bit smaller So in that case maybe remove a quarter or a third of the branch oldest branches each year And that's going to cause the plant to redirect more energy to the remaining branches and into those flowers So very much a different strategy as far as pruning All right, so I think I'm I'm going to try and get us out of here on time now We do have some photo sources here But I wanted to leave time for questions Okay, here we go. What everybody please Give us your questions Do these newer cultivars of a hydrangea require as much water as the older varieties? Now the question I think depends on the species each one is a little bit different. I think the macrophilus required more Required more watering than the PG and or I should say the paniculata or the smooth hydrangeas Now be careful don't overwater these you can overwater them and particularly if you're on a clay soil We find that our hydrangeas Don't want to be sitting in water you can kill them and you'll know it because You'll notice that your leaves will in fact start to brown and then you'll lose you'll be losing leaves So I've actually seen the other end of the spectrum where we overwater But are you familiar with pink diamond? So hearty Paniculata I am familiar with pink diamond and it does quite well here in Fargo So that's another that's another very nice one and I've heard good things anecdotally from my master gardeners For that vanilla strawberry Is that a sun or shade? Vanilla strawberry. I would say go part sun Um because you know if you look at the size of those flowers You want to make sure that you have enough sun to make that plant full to synthesize Produce sugars and carbs and produce that flower How about uh The pollinators use the stems of hydrangea for overwintering or do they use them for nesting or eggs? Um, I believe they do use them. I do frequently see hydrangeas in pollinator gardens Um, so they do have kind of that I think it's more of a hollow type stem on them, which is suitable Now I don't know Which cultivars tend to be more pollinator friendly because Some of the cultivars have sterile flowers. Some of them have kind of a mix between sterile and fertile So that can get a little messy Do does anybody ever use large tomato cages to support hydrangeas? Yes, in fact, I did. I mean that's I I was using large tomato Cases to support my anabelle hydrangea peony hoops. Yes Yes, those are some good options This person has some overgrown mugo pines in front of their house and they want to replace them with the incredible of this season When would you recommend as a time to plant and do you recommend any soil amendments that are needed? I think you can plant this spring. Um, it is it is a perennial and it should be quite hardy here Um, so I think may would be a fine time to plant now with With soil amendments, we do find that the hydrangeas don't like to have heavy clay soil So if our listener has heavy clay soils, I would recommend Incorporating some compost or peat moss. I think that helps quite a bit Now if you're on a sandy soil same recommendations to help with water retention And with the incredible is you don't have to be playing around with the acidity or You don't have to add the salt for for example Correct Okay Um, and same there's question about anabelle. Do you have to play around with the lumen sulfate or anything like that? No, you do not and that's that's a great bonus. No Okay, what do you do about rabbit damage? They love her flowers Rabbit damage. I would say apply a repellent Now the repellent we have used here on campus for a lot of different Plants is liquid fence liquid fence is made of um a putrescent egg solids and garlic and the the rabbits pretty much leave things alone Does endless summer hydrangeas stay blue in a pot if a lumen sulfate is added every year The over winter plant in a pot as well in the garage Now if your garage Is somewhat heated. I think that would help now if your garage is going to get to 20 below zero I'd be a little nervous about the whole container freezing, but if you've got a heated garage which keeps it You know fairly moderate I think that would be a decent solution To bring to bring it in in a container and the aluminum sulfate will help with soil acidity But you want to be careful. I've seen people burn the roots of these plants by over applying aluminum sulfate So it's a matter of moderation too Is the aluminum and aluminum sulfate a concern or should this person be using like elemental sulfur instead in a pot? I would recommend sulfur over the aluminum sulfate. I mean we're trying to get away from you know, adding metals to the soil and I So aluminum sulfate is not as sustainable as sulfur Esther, how about what zone of hardiness is that little lime or lime light? Uh, little lime and lime light should be zone three What else we got here, uh, you know you mentioned for endless summer mulching to 18 inches Does that really mean like to put 18 inches like shredded bark mulch underneath? No, no, I meant for over wintering So mulching them mulching them over the winter to try and protect those delicate flower buds I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. That was just That was just a confused viewer mainly me How about when you say cutting back a plant by one third? So let's say it's a six foot plant I'm going to cut it down to four feet. Is that what you're talking about? Well, you can you don't have to if you like your plant If you like your plant at that height you don't have to go that drastically But we find that a lot of our viewers are trying to Make their plants a little bit more compact because it's outgrown the space So if you want you can just trim off the dead flowers on your Picniculata and be okay Or in general like for a little like the last group you said cut back by one third So you just cut off the top one third to a live bud. Yes. Okay, I understand Can you use the cut back stems in a pollinator house? Like those hollow stems maybe not you you certainly could Now what I think is nice is if you can have stems of different sizes because we do find that the pollinators are very picky some like little Little stems some like bigger stems and such, but I think you could I think it would actually be a nice addition How about Protect the hydrangeas over winter. Can you use leaves as a mulch or do you have other suggestions? I think leaves would be a fine mulch Now what I used to do is, you know, we had tree We had more trees when I was in the living in the twin cities And we would take we'd rake up the leaves and just shred the leaves and I made a really really nice mulch At the trunk of an old Can the trunk of an older line light be cut to the ground? I I don't think so. I I wouldn't go into the trunk I I really couldn't guarantee that that would be that would be a good thing Uh, okay for for that last group you talked about like removing one third of the rejuvenation Yes, is that when you talk about cutting to the ground? Well, we'll cutting back. Yeah cutting back to you know, the main the main stem Cutting back to the main stem. Mm-hmm. Okay Okay, we just got a couple more minutes for questions As we pause the Bob doesn't have any music here We need the jeopardy Okay double jeopardy now for you ask her for 500 dollars um, Bob's pain What suggestions do you have for homeowners whose hydrangeas just aren't doing well year after year? Uh, I wonder why they're not doing well Exactly. I mean you may want to consider a soil test. You may want to consider consulting with your extension agent You know sometimes your when your extension agent comes out. It may be just immediately obvious why something isn't working You know, maybe it's getting too much sun or something So we can try and describe Things over the phone, you know, but sometimes just having one look at a property situation can can really reveal a lot Yeah, and again, or like maybe it's too wet in the area like astra says, you know, these are There's so many possibilities. So if you're if your hydrangeas are struggling, you know, just Contact your local county extension agent Take some photos and and contact them give a better description of the situation And then we can be more helpful to you Okay, I think we're going to shut it down there. Thank you answer You really did demystify hydrangeas. I understand it a little bit more now I really appreciate you simplified it very well. Thank you very much for that And uh, thank you everybody. We're going to shut it down now for tonight If you have a few more questions you can type on the end um But we're going to shut it down and next week we're going to be talking about lawns and gardens. See you next week everybody