Fall Hydrangea Update: End of Season Care

good morning everyone my name is jessica tatro and welcome to pleasantview gardens we are located in loudoun new hampshire and today is october 1st so we have finally hit our fall season up here we're right in the middle of leaf peeping season if you look around the garden you'll see lots of trees that are starting to change colors leaves are starting to fall down to the ground it's just a beautiful season out here and we're getting to the very very end of our garden season if you look back at some of our videos that we did a couple of weeks ago we were talking about some of our gardens and how long we would get out of those and unfortunately the weekend right after that we got a three nights of frost out here in the garden so we we toasted a few plants and then they're done with but we wanted to give you a walk through today on hydrangeas some care for them but also how you can take this beautiful color that you have in the garden into your house so you can still enjoy it through the winter months for those of you who are familiar with your zones we up here in new hampshire in loudoun we're in zone five some people call it 5a some call it 5b but it's pretty amazing new hampshire is quite a small state but we are quite long and we actually go from zones 3 through 6. if you can believe it zone 6 goes down in through the sun belt area if you're new to gardening and you're not sure what your zone is we have a great resource through the usda and they will tell you where your plant hardiness zone is based on your zip code as well as a mappier state so we're going to put a link down below that you can click on and that will give you all the information about what zone you're located in so side tangent on that great information and we're going to circle back around two hydrangeas here in front of me is hydrangea fire light we've shown some photos of these earlier in the season and this is a fantastic hydrangea we've had these planted in the garden for three or four years now white in the summer and then transition through the pink shades into this really beautiful reddish burgundy color in the fall time for hydrangeas people love hydrangeas and love gardening with them but they have so many questions about them and hopefully we'll give you a little bit of information today on what types of hydrangeas are out there when to prune them and then we're going to end with taking some of these blooms inside and how we can dry them so starting off hydrangeas if you don't i didn't know this i just looked this up the other day there are over 49 different species of hydrangeas that's a lot i didn't realize that hydrangeas encompassed so much and there's four kind three or four kinds that are native to north america and that includes the arborescens type so for those of you who don't know what type of hydrangea you have there's really three to four main ones that we grow out here in our garden that most people will have in their home gardens the first one is hydrangea macrophylla so those are going to be your big blooming spring ones those are typically in shades of pinks to purples and the colors will transition on them depending on the variety but that's the hydrangea that most people are familiar with those hydrangeas will bloom in the spring into early summer and for those hydrangeas those bloom on what we call old wood so what you need to do with your plant is it'll bloom in the springtime when it's done blooming go ahead and remove the dead flowers and trim back to any size that you would like after that don't touch it anymore because the growth will continue through the summer and the fall and the winter so you've got a lot of growth on the plant so that's the old growth and the buds are going to be setting on those if you prune them in the spring you've just removed all of your flowers so that's one of the questions people have is why don't my hydrangeas bloom you might be pruning at the wrong time of the season so for your big um macrophylla types the pinks and the purples blues those you want to prune just after they flower moving on to two other types these both bloom on what we call old wood or new wood so they're much more forgiving out here in the garden the first one is hydrangea arborescens so those are your huge flowered white ones proven as also pink too this is really unique to proven winners but we have hydrangea incredible and then invincibelle spirit two and that's the pink colored one but those are really huge flowers on the plants and those you're going to want to bloom excuse me prune in the springtime and then they'll bloom on the new wood that develops throughout the season so those will bloom mid to late summer for you guys and then continue through the season but i think my favorite hydrangeas out here in the garden are the paniculata types the panicle types and these are the ones that are typically more cone-shaped but they can be slightly rounded as well and most of these are white flowered but then we've got some really cool cultivars that spring meadow through the color choice program has been introducing to the market and right here in front of me is one of them which is firelight we also have some other ones called quickfire pinky winky a lot of fun names and they've been actually doing a lot of breeding so there's hydrangeas that are large for your garden like limelight they just get up five six eight ten feet tall depending on how you prune them but they're also developing more and more cultivars that are dwarf and compact for smaller spaces so depending on your space needs and what color you want we will be able to find a hydrangea for you in the program but the paniculata types as i said earlier bloom on new wood so in the springtime once the buds just start to pop on them you can go through trim your plant back to shape and then let it go and you'll enjoy color all season long on these up here in new england and in some of the cooler portions of the country it's really pretty in the wintertime to actually have these older flowers on the plants and then you get the snow and it kind of comes on them and it just creates this magical atmosphere i grew up in florida so snow is still a fun thing for me even though i've been up here for 12 years i just absolutely love the seasons that you get with gardening winter is a great time to kind of take a breath and plan so actually as we go through this video series in the winter time we'll talk about some garden planning for you guys so stay tuned to those future videos sorry rambling a little bit this morning but back to the hydrangeas so these are um hydrangea fire light and we're going to go through here and prune off some blooms and give you some tips for being able to take your flowers into the house and dry them and so you can enjoy them all season long we're a little bit late in the season right now to be drying the hydrangeas because you look through the blooms here and we've already started to lose some of our flowers and our bracks and they turn color here so we have to be very selective whoops we've got a tractor going by this is our last week of pulling mums out in the field there we go so when you dry the flowers anytime that you have dead portions on these you actually are going to accentuate those dead spots when you take them in the house so you really want to try to do this towards the middle to end of the season this is a good example up here where you flowered from the bottom all the way up through the top so you've flowered all of your florets but you haven't started to turn brown i know we're a little bit passed on a few of these and i'm just going to accept it and go with it because it's still a beautiful color but you want to choose blooms where you've flowered all the way to the top and then the petals have started to turn and feel a little bit papery that's how you know that they're at the right stage for doing that and then pull out your pruners i always keep them in my back pocket yes i'm a gardener i always have them with me and my pocket knife my dad would be proud of that but you're going to want to cut a long stem and then you can trim it down to size once you take it in the house so we're going to prune down here and then we're going to cut a few more blooms and then we'll take them inside but when you get ready to go inside you're going to want to remove the leaves that are on it up through here just so you can enjoy the blooms and just put those down there and then when you're ready to put them into the vase grab your vase make sure you grab a heavy vase because some of these flowers will get some weight to them so you don't want to get one that's too top heavy and you put a bloom in and it crashes over or the cat knocks it over or the toddler knocks it over whatever you have i've got cats and toddlers at my house but grab a heavy vase put it in a safe spot you're going to want to put it in a location that is relatively cool and a little bit on the darker side don't put these out in full sun or in your brightest window in the house because it will fasten the drying process and you won't get what you want for the end result so go ahead grab a nice sturdy vase put about two inches of water in the bottom cut to size at a nice sharp angle and i'll do the cut later when i'm ready to put it in the vase but a nice sharp angle put it in the vase again one to two inches of water put it in a darkish area and then don't water it again the plant will take up what it needs and then it will slowly start the drying process and then just let it go and enjoy through the season so we're gonna cut a few flowers and then we'll show you a picture at the end of the final product good luck with your garden this year you

Channel: Pleasant View Gardens

Views: 60,001

Keywords: fall hydrangea care, hydrangea types and care, hydrangea pruning, hydrangea paniculata, limelight hydrangea, pruning hydrangeas, how to, gardening ideas for beginners, pruning hydrangeas in fall, hydrangea care pruning, how to prune hydrangeas, limelight hydrangea pruning, limelight hydrangea care, limelight hydrangea prime, hydrangea pruning video, hydrangea care fall

Id: MXaze7AEFHU

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020