Love, love hydrangeas. When we first moved here we had a hard time growing them. Then Mac planted 1 small plant by the fence next to the driveway and it just took off. It's huge now and has to be trimmed back to keep it from taking over. It's a blue one, which means that the soil there is acid, with a ph below 6.
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| The Original Plant, Flower Will Soon Be a Bright Blue |
He took a cutting off of that plant and put it in a pot and stuck a metal tool in with it, not intentionally, just left it there after he'd used it to plant with . When it flowered it was pink indicating alkaline soil with a ph above 7.
He then started another plant, didn't put anything metal in the soil and this plant is producing red hydrangeas.
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| The Second Plant |
I read that if the soil ph is neutral 6-7 then you'll get lavender flowers, one of my neighbors has a plant like this.
You can change the color of your plants by adding garden sulfur to change pink ones to blue or lime to change blue to pink.
If you have white hydrangeas you're stuck, they don't change colors.
With enough lime some plants will turn a deep, dark purple.
Quite a plant.
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| The Red One |
i do too!! they are big easy colourful blooming things so why don't we have any? I will have to rectify that.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful flowers. I knew that they flowered in different colours depending on the soil but I didn't realise you could change the acidity of the soil like that.- how fascinating!
ReplyDeleteThey are so fascinating and so very lush and beautiful.
ReplyDeleteWhat fun to play with the blossom colours and see what you'll get. :)
I like hydrangeas too, have a nice one in our garden at the coast, they do well in the sea air. They do well here also but I haven't room for one in this garden.
ReplyDeleteI love hydrangeas, too. A lot. Especially the blue variety. My favourite flowers are peonies but hydrangeas come a very close second.
ReplyDeleteMarianne from Let's Read
I always enjoy your posts.
ReplyDelete