Hydrangas Won't Flower

Can anyone suggest a reason my hydrangas won't flower? They are on a Northern exposure, and are tall and green. The first few years I got a lot of flowers. Since then, almost nothing.

The same thing happened to me but then I found out you are not supposed to cut backt the woody stems each year. Are you cutting back the woody stems at the end of the season or in the beginning of spring? If so don't. When the leaves fall off in the winter just let new leaves come out of the old stems in the spring and you will get flowers.

TFD

brsher wrote:

Spend some time at this site - lots of good info, including a section on proper pruning techniques.

They need sun to bloom. A northern exposure will have less flowers.

Too much nitrogen fertilizer will prevent them from blooming but make them grow tall and green. You might test your soil and see if you need potassium or potash.

Most hygrangeas bloom on old wood, so pruning them will keep them from blooming. This is especially true of the mopheads. Endless Summer is an exception that blooms on old wood and new wood.

Some hydrangeas are not cold hardy and cold winters will kill the buds. Florist hydrangeas frequently fall into this category.

Also, late spring freezes will kill buds. When this happens, the plant usually loods bad.

It would help to know what varieties you have and where you are located.

Sorry. OE "saw" html in the original message and responded accordingly. I thought it would convert to text when I posted it. As punishment, I'm going to deprive myself of coffee ice cream for a day.

Travis, you would rather copy and paste the url than just click on it. The whole Idea of posting an html link in this group is because its not a binary group. I say html away doug, especially if its harmelss.

Toad

If being able to click on links in news messages is important to someone, there are many news clients that upon seeing a link in a plain text message will make that link clickable. If not, cutting and pasting is not rocket science. Posting a pageful of html tags just to communicate a one line message is a waste, and will result in the message being ignored by people. An ignored message communicates nothing.

BTW... Doug, in OE, go to Tools, > Options > Send. You can uncheck the box for replying to messages in the format that they were sent. Many people get the default posting method at the bottom of that tab right, but they miss that checkbox in the middle of the page. Or if you don't want to uncheck it (because it'll also affect e-mail), pulling down the Format menu on the reply message allows you to remove the html, and post in plain text.

Wake up. That is not HTML, it is a URL. They are certainly appropriate in any group.

Yes. Posting a url is appropriate. Using a pageful of HTML to do it is not.

You may have seen an almost ordinary looking message (which is another reason the HTML was more pointless), but people who don't have HTML turned-on in their newsreaders (and they shouldn't have to) saw something like what's below. (I disabled some of the tag in a hope that you can see it, too.)

(!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

(HTML>

(META http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; = charset=3Diso-8859-1">

(META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=3DGENERATOR>

(STYLE>

(/HEAD>

(BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>

(DIV>(FONT face=3DCourier size=3D2>Spend some time at this site - lots = of good info,=20 including a section on proper pruning techniques. (DIV>(FONT face=3DCourier size=3D2>(A=20 href=3D"

You can set OE to reply to a HTML post in plain text.

This link will work and this post is not in HTML.

You may know Rhododendrons but you can't tell a HTML message when you see one. Idiot.

I'll be democratic and see if I get more than one other complaint in the next 30 days. If I do, I'll switch it.

So far, you're the only one bothered by this, and I've been participating in newsgroups for quite a few years, including some which attract geeks for whom "anal retentive" is an understatement. Haven't heard a single complaint until yesterday. Let's wait and see if the comments pile up.

When responding to your message, I clicked Format, Plain Text. Does this look like HTML?

Now, here's a link:

Let me know if that link looks clickable to you.

My newsreader doesn't have HTML and all I saw was a URL. No gibberish.

This is your problem. The old wood is not dead. It is where all your flower buds are located. You won't get any flowers. You can't prune the old wood and expect flowers.

Hydrangeas do not need to be pruned. However, if you insist:

For mophead and oak leaf hydrangeas you need wait until the new foliage comes out in the spring. Then only dead wood should be removed. After the plants are at least 4 years old, about 1/3 of the older stems can be removed down to the ground each summer. This will revitalize the plant. In addition, if it becomes necessary to prune a plant to reduce its size, it may be cut back in June or July without harming the next year's bloom.