Best Time to Prune a Climbing Hydrangea

Sandy in Canton says, “I’d like some information about my climbing hydrangea. It’s healthy. I don’t know how to prune it and when to prune it. Just those long branches that come up.”

This was an easy one. You can prune that climbing hydrangea, you can almost do whatever you want to that plant, because the climbing hydrangea is very similar to a burning bush. Now I wouldn’t say cut like half the plant down in the middle of July or August, that’s still a bad idea.

But if you want to do some light pruning on it, one of the ponds that we take care of has a ton of climbing hydrangeas used as a ground cover around the pond, which is absolutely beautiful, but it does have a tendency to grow down in the stream bed in the summer months looking for water. We keep it trimmed back out of there with no issues whatsoever. It’s been established for a while like yours has, you can do pruning on that plant this time of year and you’re not going to hurt it one bit.

So ideally I would use our all season fertilizer. You can put it down anytime in the middle into April, even the beginning middle of May, anytime in that like one month time frame. Put that fertilizer down in the recommended amount and you shouldn’t have to fertilize it the rest of the season. It takes care of it for the entire season.

It’s just easy. Instead of having to do something three, four or five times, now you only have to do it once, it’s one and done. It’s got a lot of iron, which makes the leaves a real dark green as well.

All-season’s got everything you need to make the plants healthy. The manufacturer does say you can use it on vegetables, Our personal stance at Rohr’s Nursery is if you’re going to take the time to grow something to eat, we recommend you stay organic for food products and food crops. But yes, the manufacturer does say it can be used on fruits and vegetables.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).