You should deadhead throughout the blooming season to keep your hydrangeas looking their beast and encourage new flower growth. However, stop deadheading hydrangea shrubs in mid to late fall, leaving any spent blooms in place.
But there's one key aspect of ensuring hydrangeas return bigger and better every year: deadheading. The practice of removing spent flowers from a plant, deadheading encourages stronger, more bountiful blooms later on.
When to deadhead hydrangeas. 'Deadheading can be done either right after flowering, late winter at the end of the season, or early spring before the next season begins,' says Rachel Crow, a garden expert from Homes & Gardens.
They will not rebloom, but deadheading will clean up the plant and make way for the next year's fresh flowers.
6. What to do if your hydrangeas have brown flowers? Clip those toasted blooms off, snipping just under the browned flower. Removing browned petals improves the look of the plant and for re-blooming varieties helps to promote the production of more flowers.
If you don't prune hydrangeas then they can eventually resemble a tangled mass of woody stems, and the flowers will become smaller and less showy.
Are the blooms on your hydrangea shrubs fading or turning brown? No need to worry – this is simply a sign that it's time to remove the flowers, a process called deadheading. When you deadhead hydrangeas, you aren't harming the plants at all.
Hydrangea macrophylla, big leaf hydrangea
These plants produce buds in late summer to early fall (August-September) that will form next year's flowers. So prune these shrubs after they finish blooming before August (again, make a heading cut).
Keep good air space between the plants; don't crowd them together or against other plants. Don't give bigleaf hydrangeas too much love; if they're too comfortable (water, fertilizer, etc.), they may devote all their foliage to leaves instead of blooms.
Coffee grounds add extra acidity to the soil around hydrangeas. On a chemical level, this increased acidity makes it easier for the plant to absorb naturally occurring aluminum in the dirt. The effect is pretty blue clusters of flowers.
With insufficient watering, the leaves will begin to fade, and the flowers will turn brown. When hydrangeas do not get enough water they begin to get crispy; their leaves, their flowers… it's not pretty. It is very common to see them in a mid day slump.
Wrap with winter protection.
During the winter, make a DIY A-frame wire cage out of burlap and chicken wire to protect your hydrangea plant. This cage will protect it from winter winds, heavy snowfall, and cold temperatures.
In late winter or early spring, these shrubs can be cut all the way back to the ground. Smooth hydrangeas will produce much larger blooms if pruned hard like this each year, but many gardeners opt for smaller blooms on sturdier stems.
While some plants bloom on new growth, others primarily set flower buds on old wood. Regardless, it is best to wait to prune all hydrangeas until spring. In the fall, hydrangeas (and all trees and shrubs) are in the process of going dormant. They do not produce very much new growth until the following spring.
Some gardeners report success in turning their hydrangeas blue by applying coffee grounds to the soil. The coffee grounds make the soil more acidic, allowing the hydrangea to more easily absorb aluminum.
Hydrangea Care Tips
Water at a rate of 1 inch per week throughout the growing season. Deeply water 3 times a week to encourage root growth. Bigleaf and smooth hydrangeas require more water, but all varieties benefit from consistent moisture.
To reduce the size of a hydrangea that blooms on new wood, cut off about one-third of each stem in late fall or early spring before it begins to leaf out. If your hydrangea blooms on old wood, prune right after it has bloomed when the flowers are fading.
Should I Cut Off Brown Hydrangea Leaves? The short answer is, “it depends.” While damage to leaves is unsightly, they can and will recover if you identify the problem and implement the solution early enough. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend removing leaves when they are 50% brown or higher.