Hydrangeas? Advice?!

[noahsmom]

Anyone familiar with planting and maintaining hydrangeas?! I've got 13 hydrangea plants they are 'Nikko blue' and 'Merritt's supreme'. We have two 20ish foot long beds and I had planned to alternate the 'blue' & 'pink/purple' but was told it would be hard to get these colors. We used a tiller on the beds and added compost, fertilizer and peat moss a week or so ago. We are located in north eastern ky, zone 6b. I've been told to add lime to one color and aluminum sulfate to the other. I'm sort of confused and brand new to gardening. This is a smaller variety reaching 3-4ft high and 3-4ft wide. What do you recommend for spacing ? I was told by someone locally I have to many plants but I want them to be together not to view as each individual bush if that makes sense.

Any advice is welcome!

 

[noahsmom]

Anyone?

 

[Weehopper]

Just look up how to grow hydrangeas on the net. I got one for Mom's day, and the instructions that America with it said partial shade. That's about all I know.

 

[Treebones]

To plant them, just evenly space them down one bed. If they are a dwarf variety, they won't get too big. I would plant in odd numbers. 7 in one bed 5 in the other.
In order keep the colour of the flowers depends on the acidity/ alkalinity of your soil. Acidic - blue. Alkaline - pink.
You can try to keep the colours. Add lime to the pink ones every year. And peat moss to the blue ones. It will quite difficult to keep blue ones pink if your soil is acidic.
Good luck. For the first year or 2, you'll have them the colour you bought but they'll slowly revert to the colour that applies to your soil.

 

[henless]

I bought 5 blue hydrangeas at the end of the season last year. They didn't do that great due to the heat and lack of rain. I kept them watered and mulched them. This year they look so much better! I did lose one, so I will have to replace it. Mine look to be a lavendar color. I'll check tomorrow to make sure on the color.

If you want different color hydrangeas, I would plant one color in each bed. It will be easier to keep the colors that way. As far as spacing, it really depends on how big they get. I put mine about 5 ft apart, but they are the bigger variety.

 

[lazy gardener]

A lot of the color determination comes from the pH of the soil and it's interaction with Aluminum in the soil. So, if you want to play around with chemistry, you can alter the color. http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/colorchange.html

 

[henless]

Here are my hydrangeas I planted last year. They are doing really well. I have blue, lavender and pink hydra's on some of my bushes.



Most are still blue. I hope more of them end up being multi colored bushes.



These are Endless Summer variety. They get 3-6 ft tall & wide. I hope I can find some more like this to plan in other areas of my yard.