Hydrangeas need water, food, shade

Q. My hydrangea failed to bloom again this year. What am I doing wrong?

Jane from Canfield

A. The biggest challenge with these plants is that gardeners want to plant and grow the difficult varieties, ignoring the ones that grow and bloom beautifully here in the Mahoning Valley with no troubles.

The stunning blues and striking pinks of the florist-type hydrangeas are just too beautiful not to try. They are referred to as bigleaf hydrangeas (H. macrophylla). Many of these are hardy to zone 6 and higher, meaning they grow best along the river in southern Ohio and in the Carolinas. But even with this limitation, with luck or good planning, you can grow many cultivars of this hydrangea and get blooms every year. Luck comes into play when you plant a bigleaf Hydrangea in the perfect area, not understanding why it did so well. For the rest of you, here are some tips to get that plant blooming every year:

Decide how much work you are doing to do to keep that hydrangea going. Many bigleaf types need to be treated like hybrid tea roses with winter protection each year. For the biggest and best, you’ll need to keep the flower buds from being killed by late frosts because buds are set the previous year on old wood. The plants will die back to the ground during most Northeast Ohio winters. If it loses the buds it set last year, you’ll need to fertilize to get it back on its feet. Use a general-purpose fertilizer in spring as soon as you see the green emerging from the roots.

Provide the correct soil and shade conditions. Hydrangeas are woodland plants, so they like lots of organic matter that holds onto moisture, but they don’t like wet roots, so make sure the area is well drained. And they like dappled shade. If yours wilts consistently, it needs to be moved.

Finally, try some other hydrangeas. There are tons of other options out there, including white blooms and pink blooms in early May (Hydrangea arborescens) all the way through the greens and strawberry colors of the Panicle hydrangeas (H. paniculata). I’ve made a simple chart to help even the newest gardener understand the species and cultivars: http://go.osu.edu/hydrangeas.

Eric Barrett is OSU Ext. educator for agriculture and natural resources in Mahoning County. Call the office hot line at 330-533-5538 from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays and Thursdays to submit your questions.