Sad Hydrangeas

[Maggiethecat]

Not the lovely white blooms that I can see in gardens around me - these aren’t the end stage of the flowers, they always look shabby.

Am I doing something wrong?

For a start, that’s a pink one! They come in different colours so a pink hydrangea isn’t going to be snowy white no matter what you do to it, OP.

It also looks pretty thirsty. Have you been watering it well during this dry patch? The leaves are changing colour and the flowers are turning dull. Flowers are thirsty things, a shrub in bloom needs water.

And, if you don’t mind my saying, a good prune and repot next spring would do it the world of good. The soil nutrients get depleted and there’s nothing to nurture the plant’s growth.

A good prune now for good flower growth next year. Put some used tea bags in the soil. This creates the right soil conditions to get beautiful blue blooms.

Side note - lots of people talk about changing colours of hydrangeas by making the soil more acidic (blue) or alkaline (pink).

This doesn’t work for all hydrangeas. The white ones pretty much stay white. Also, it’s hard to sustain, the plants tend to revert to what they want to be eventually. And only some strains of hydrangeas are affected anyway.

However, in my experience any relative over the age of 70 who had those mop-head hydrangeas that looked like the Queen Mum’s hats in their gardens when they were young will talk to you at length about ensuring nice ericaceous soil for blue hydrangeas.

😂😂😂

cross-posted with @PurpleReindeer2 - I didn’t wish to cast aspersions as to her age! I’m sure she is far, far away from 70.

But the OP wants “snowy blooms” which will never happen with a pink flowered shrub.

Don't prune new shoots as that's what it will flower on next year.

Haha amazing OP.

These are thirsty creatures. Unlikely to be happy in a pot so unless you have somewhere to plant I would stop torturing yourself.

They are happier in beds than in pots, if you have the option to plant it out

Agree with others about the colour.
Hydrangeas need lots of water.
Yours needs a hard prune and a new pot and some food.
May be scale related - nasty white patches on the undersides of leaves and stems. Affected parts need to be removed and spray. Check from early in the growing season.

I’ve got about 50 hydrangeas. Some in the ground, about 20 in pots. They need repotting regularly, at least every other year until they are in as big a pot as your site can deal with. My mature ones are in waist high/square pots to give you an idea of scale! (We have a fork lift for moving them about, which i realise isn’t for everyone.)
Feed in pots every 10 days from march till July. In the ground two or three times in the spring.
Water consistently. The ones in pots are watered everyday, they are very thirsty plants.
From your picture, I’d say it’s pot bound and used up all the nutrients in the soil. Plant it out in the garden, or repot and feed. But start a regular feeding regime next spring. I never prune except to shape. Deadhead once your sure the last frost has gone.

Also where is it positioned? They’re a bit more tolerant in the ground, but in pots don’t like any afternoon sun…thats how I’ve ended up with a collection as we have a tricky shady spot that nothing else in pots seems to thrive in!

Definitely needs repotting into a larger pot. My hydrangeas don’t like a lot of sun. Make sure they’re in the shade for at least half of the day

I think you'll find it needs to be planted out rather than in a pot. They need a lot of water op 😁

🤣 not quite 70 yet but getting there far too fast for my liking! x

The snowy blooms are probably Annabelle if they have big round heads, or possibly Lime Light (green-white) or Vanille Fraise (start white, then go pink) if they have pointy heads (paniculata).

If you want them to be in a pot then see if you can get a good dwarf variety, like Bobo or Little Lime. I wouldn't choose to grow hydrangea in a pot because I'm not a very attentive gardener and I wouldn't water them enough, I have a few different types planted in my front garden though and they are very happy so long as it rains.

I'm not sure what variety you have there but it looks as though it wants to be pink (although it could be a type that starts white and turns pink later in the season). Also it's massively thirsty. It can recover, I had some Vanille Fraise plants that 'died' during a really dry summer with a hosepipe ban. I didn't dig them out and they still looked dead the next summer but the summer after that they came back weakly. Now they're back to full strength.

It is a summer flowering shrub and will flower on the branches that it grows next spring, so it can be pruned now.

Spring flowering shrubs flower on branches grown the previous autumn, and those are the ones you aren't supposed to prune later in the year.

They need lots of water.
I heard Diarmuid Gavin say the ither day that the clue was in the name - Hydrangea

Thanks everyone - I’ll find a space for it in my back garden and relieve it from the pot.

I have been giving it good watering having heard that they like a lot.

I bought a white flowering plant last year and have never seen it flower pink although I can see flashes of colour.

Why is being over 70 a bad thing?