Key Points
Pick a reblooming variety like Endless Summer® for blooms from spring to fall.
Stop pruning and fertilizing by August 1 to protect next year’s buds.
Provide morning sun, moist soil, and winter cover to encourage reblooming.
Hydrangeas are one of the most beloved flowers in the garden, their showy flowers putting on a bountiful display every summer. But for some, that display doesn’t last quite as long as we’d like it to.
While most hydrangeas only bloom once in summer, there are some hydrangea varieties that can bloom twice—given the right conditions—taking your display from late spring right up until the very first frost in fall.
Advertisement
Advertisement
“Reblooming hydrangeas are a godsend for those of us who garden in cold climates or climates with finicky weather,” says hydrangea expert Lorraine Ballato.
Ballato shares her best tips for getting hydrangeas to rebloom this summer, so you can enjoy your plants all season long.
Meet the Expert
Lorraine Ballato is a writer, speaker, and horticulturalist, and has written books and a blog about hydrangea care.
Get the Right Variety of Hydrangea
Credit: Pakin Songmor / Getty Images
The first step to getting your hydrangeas to bloom all summer is to make sure you have the right variety.
Endless SummerⓇ is the best known type of reblooming hydrangea, and is widely available at nurseries across the country.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Other varieties include Incrediball™, Pop Star®, and PeeGee, among others. But even then, Ballato offers a word of caution.
“There is a lot of hype about which hydrangeas actually rebloom since some don’t always deliver,” she says. “[I] can tell you some rebloom better than others.”
If you have a non-reblooming variety of hydrangea, like oakleaf, unfortunately there is no way to force it to rebloom.
Prune at the Right Times
Credit: Olga Dobrovolska / Getty Images
One of the biggest mistakes people make with hydrangeas is not pruning at the right times—or not pruning them at all.
Pruning and deadheading are both essential steps for making your hydrangeas rebloom in summer, and for ensuring they bloom at all the next year.
Advertisement
Advertisement
If you are tempted to prune your hydrangea in fall, Ballato recommends not pruning past August 1.
“That will give them time to ‘quiet down’ and get ready for dormancy,” she says. “Now is the time for it to make buds for next year’s flowers.”
For spring pruning, you want to make sure you actually see buds on the stems before taking the shears to your shrub.
“Without seeing buds, you simply don’t know if they survived the winter and you don’t want to remove nascent buds,” Ballato says.
Time Your Fertilizing
Credit: Fred R Palmer / Getty Images
Just like pruning, it’s important to time your fertilizing properly to ensure your hydrangeas rebloom.
Ballato suggest that when you stop pruning around August 1, you also stop any fertilizing, so the plant isn’t stimulated to put out new growth.
Ensure the Right Light and Soil Conditions
Credit: KenWiedemann / Getty Images
The main element of success for any plant—reblooming hydrangeas included—is that they are receiving the right light, soil, and other cultural conditions.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Ballato says hydrangeas ideally should be planted in an area where they receive full sun in the morning, and do best in soil that retains moisture but isn’t soggy or water-logged. You should also make sure you are using a soil that has all the nutrients required by hydrangeas.
And winter conditions are important as well, Ballato says.
“Most importantly, in cold climates it’s critically important that this plant is protected by winter persistent something (shed, fence, evergreen plant like a rhododendron, arborvitae, azalea, etc.) to help shield it from the winter weather,” she says.
Read the original article on The Spruce
Comments are closed.