Finicky Endless Summer Hydrangeas

We have a question from Teresa, ‘I have a hydrangea and I’m not sure what kind it is. I finally got one bloom this year. It’s pink and round. It’s a lower hydrangea. So I’m not sure what the name of it is. I know I left the old wood and one bloom was on new wood. But this has probably been the first time it’s bloomed in four years.

I had left it because I didn’t know what it bloomed on, new wood or old wood, just to leave it. I left the old wood. And like I say, there’s only one big bloom on it and there’s nothing else coming. It’s on the northeast corner of my house. So I don’t know if that’s a good place.’

Yep. So it sounds like you have endless summer variety, like macrophylla hydrangea. They can be a little finicky. If you trim them, they won’t flower. Soil condition plays a big part. There’s a lot of different things, but trimming, definitely. I don’t know if you’ve trimmed it in the past or haven’t trimmed it. You have to trim it at a certain time, and only cut out the dead stalks. You won’t get any flowers.

It is in a good area. It sounds like everything that you’ve done is correct. Honestly, I think you’d probably just need to add some more phosphorus into the soil. They are heavy feeders. When you trimmed it, that was the right thing to do. I usually don’t do that until the spring. The fact that you have one bloom tells me that, you know, you’re on the right track. I would add some more phosphorus to the soil.

You might not see any more blooming this year, but it’ll help again for next year. They are kind of tricky. I know we get that question a lot. Like, why isn’t my hydrangea blooming? They do like a lot of phosphorus in the soil, so if you use triple super phosphate, like early spring, it really helps for the following year. If you continue to do add it, it’ll really help it continuously.

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