Episode 28: My Blue Hydrangeas Aren’t Blooming

About This Episode

In this week’s episode of Ask Grumpy, Steve Bender, Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener helps a reader with their blue hydrangeas. Plus, Grumpy’s plant of the week, the Balloon Flower.

Question Of The Week

I live in Michigan and have a question about blue hydrangeas. I've had them for three years and they get plenty of light. I feed them with food for acid-loving plants, but they've never bloomed. Any advice?

Well, it could be a couple of reasons why your hydrangeas aren't blooming. When you say you have blue hydrangeas or you have the pink ones, generally you're referring to what we call French or big leaf hydrangeas, the botanical name is hydrangea macrophylla. And if they're not blooming, you may be pruning them at the wrong time. The only time that you should be pruning them is in early spring, and before you prune, you go out and look for signs of life in the stems. When you see these big, fat green buds start coming out of the stems, what you want to do is cut each stem down to the top, just above the topmost bud. That way, you won't be cutting off anything that's alive, you won't be cutting off any flower buds. Now, when the flower bud opens, you can tell it from a leaf bud because the flower bud will have this little stalk in it that looks like a little stalk of broccoli, and that's just a little expanding hydrangea flower, so you know that you're going to get a bloom.

Now, another problem could be that when you live in a place in the Upper Midwest, like Minnesota or Michigan, it could be that your winters are just too cold for the kinds you have. And if you have one of the older kinds of these hydrangeas that bloom only once a year, generally in late spring, early summer, if the flower buds of those are killed, you're not going to get any blooms that summer. A good way to get around this is when you go to a garden center, look for the repeat blooming hydrangeas. You may have heard of the types called Endless Summer, and there's lots of other ones. So, when you go to buy a hydrangea at the garden center, be sure to ask, "Does this rebloom?" And that way you'll have good insurance on getting blooms that year.

Plant Of The Week

Balloon Flower

It's a really nice perennial because it gets its name from its expanding flower buds. It blooms in the summertime, and as the buds grow and get larger and larger and larger, they expand out so they look like balloons right before they pop open. They're very easy to grow, they like a sunny, well drained spot. They have several different colors. They have white, pink, and my favorite is this really deep blue, which I love because blue is a very hard flower color to find in the garden. After they bloom and the flowers fade, if you will cut them back, they will put out a new flush of growth and you'll get more flowers. I haven't seen hardly any pest problems associated with them.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.