Hi Redsox, It's OK - I don't mind talking about Limelight here, but then it's the Rose Forum!!! LOL! Anyway, I did not really prune my Limelight last year (it was planted just last year). However, though there were many blooms, the stems were weaker. I am going to prune it next spring, so that there will be fewer blooms, but the stems will be stronger and the blooms will be larger. If you search in the Hydrangea Forum, you will find some interesting and helpful information there. Some also recommended pruning some of the branches only, leaving the stronger ones behind, so you will have a nicely balanced plant that will be full and maintain a vase shape. I think it will grow back if you cut it to the ground, but the goal is to maintain a nice vase shape so you should prune it in such a way to achieve that. I also understand that with paniculatas, you should aim to achieve a strong, single-trunk structure too in order for it to look its best. Now, do you have roses as companion plants next to your Limelight? How tall and wide is your Limelight? How old is it?

Hello, tinamcg. I do not try to change hydrangea color but this is my understanding of the process. Before adding aluminum sulfate, I would make a soil test. A soil test is necessary to tell you if you already have "enough" naturally occuring aluminum in the soil. If you do not then apply aluminum sulfate to increase aluminum levels and lower the Ph. Aluminum sulfate should work fast since its application causes a chemical reaction. Once you measure "normal" levels of aluminum in the soil or if you already had "normal" levels of aluminum in your soil, you may want to apply elemental sulphur (a.k.a. flowers of sulphur) in order to further tweak the PH Level. Contrary to aluminum sulfate, Elemental Sulphur takes several weeks to acidify the soil because it first has to be oxidized by bacteria (here you have a biological reaction, not a chemical reaction). I would add chemicals monthly but only thru the growing season in Spring and quit when summer starts. Not particular reason for that though. I do not want to introduce 'problems' with the addition of chemicals at a time when the plants experience high temperatures, lack of humidity and drying winds. Regarding your desire to control the color to lilac or blue, be aware that color change is a project that takes several years and requires lots of applications and soil tests (to see how things are progressing). Also, it is very difficult to the intensity of a color (how strong or pale the color is) so you may need to experiment with other varieties if ES just does not want to attain the type of color that you want. Luis

Just thought I'd post the results I had in one garden bed that's clay-loam. Last year I had amended this bed with home-made compost. Everything did well last year as first year plantings. This year they suffered from too little light. (I just put the roses there to get them through the winter and hoping they might like the eastern exposure. Heathcliff, Sugar Moon and Falstaff like sun in my neck of the woods, it seems. I'll probably be moving the viking Queen next Spring as she's a fraction of the size of her sister in full sun, and hasn't bloomed since Spring while her sister would be non-stop if not for the midge.) Anyway, the soil was very dry even with rain. I thought the heavy leaf layer prevented water. I stuffed the empty holes with alfalfa hay, compost and leaf mold until I decided what to plant. I also put the alfalfa under the leaves in the rest of the bed and gave it additional compost. Wow, when I went to plant Lavender Lassie and two hydrangeas, all the soil was so soft and fluffy and moist, even though we had less rain that earlier. I'm now prepping my holes in advance of next Spring and filling them with the same and covering the entire bed with alfalfa hay, etc. The new plantings have taken off even in the reduced light of late summer. I repeated this in another new bed and Mme Alfred Carriere and Awakening seem to love it even in their NE exposure. (Of course, they could just be responding to being in the ground vs. in pots. : ) ) Lesson learned. : ) I'm also trying gypsum on some new beds I'm prepping since they're on an incline. I'll report back.

Another way to "cheat" a bit if you want to plant something that really prefers acidic soil in a region that has mostly alkaline soil is by adding soil sulfur (the elemental kind) to increase the acidity over a period of time. The elemental sulfur breaks down more slowly over a couple of years, so I only have to replenish mine every 2-3 years around acid-loving plants, and I don't bother with the shorter term fertilizers like the Hollytone (mostly because I'm too lazy to fertilize anything at all of course). I expect this doesn't work with the extremely alkaline soils like in California deserts, but I can grow blueberries this way in soil that really isn't at all suited for them otherwise. Blueberries are known for not bearing fruit and going pale in leaves if they are not in acidic conditions, but I get plenty of fruit if I can keep the birds and squirrels away from the bushes (sigh). In my area, it's unheard of for blue hydrangeas to actually bloom blue without significant intervention, but it's not too alkaline around here for multiflora grafted roses. Rugosas sulk a bit without some extra soil sulfur too, and after all this discussion I might try a bit around my hybrid musks to see if it perks them up. I don't get much chlorosis except on the blueberries if I get behind in soil sulfur, beyond the spring when everything's a bit chlorotic because of the heavy rains interfering with nutrient uptake. Cynthia