HYDRANGEA MID SEASON FERTILIZING AND PRUNING

Now that July is here, it’s time for one more round of hydrangea fertilizing and maybe even some pruning.

FERTILIZING HYDRANGEAS IN JULY

The fertilizing is much easier now than in the spring. You only want to help your reblooming hydrangeas now. So that means work on the big leaf (macrophylla) and mountain varieties (serrata) and whatever you have that is a reblooming smooth hydrangea. That covers anything that has a name with the word “Incrediball” or “Invincibelle” in it. Take a look at this post to get the details.

PRUNING HYDRANGEAS IN JULY

The other July job might be to “pinch prune” your old wood flowering hydrangeas. Those are predominantly the bigleaf (macrophylla) and mountain (serrata) varieties. You can accomplish two things with this pinch pruning: one is to encourage your plants to develop a second flower-bearing stem for next year, and the second is to remove some of the top growth that may be obscuring your current season’s flowers. Linda Coven from the Cape Cod Hydrangea Society did a terrific video on this extra stem removal, which you can see here.

As for pinch pruning, go to one of my earlier posts to get those details. One of the best parts of pinch pruning and this mid-season clearing is you can take cuttings and propagate them for new plants for next year. It will take the rest of the season for those cuttings to develop strong enough roots for you to transplant them in the fall and tuck them in for the winter.

NEWS ABOUT MY NEWEST HYDRANGEA BOOK

The cover of my book about hydrangea pruning

The sales for Hydrangea Pruning: What Stays, What Goes, and When have been brisk, and I thank you for that. By now, you have probably had a chance to examine the details of the book and have found some pearls. I would love to know what they are. If you can find the time to leave a brief review, that would be so helpful for me as well as other potential buyers. Use this handy QR code to get to Amazon to leave that review.

QR Code for Amazon Review

CAPE COD HYDRANGEA FESTIVAL

I’ll be at the Cape Cod Hydrangea Festival next week. If you are also attending, please find me in the Hydrangea University crowd on Wednesday, July 15, and say hello. I would love to meet you.

Thanks for reading.