Mine really get going when the nights are cooler than the days in the fall..that is when they just load down with blooms...sometimes it doesn't freeze here till around Christmas and it will be in continuous flower, bud, and seedpod till then. It will really bloom all year unless I cut it back severly or let freeze to the ground. Most of mine bloom sporadically when it gets super hot and humid like July, August. I can get really good flushes in spring, early summer, and fall, early winter. It freezes here in the winter so I can either keep them going or cut back and let go semi dormant in the gh or leave in ground to go all the way dormant. If you are in the midwest where the nights cool down alot more than the daytime temps, you may have good flushes all summer and fall and possibly late spring if you keep a few Ys on the plant when you cut them back in the winter.

John, I had a pretty good year here. French Canadian is on her third flush with another to come if the temps hold. I think it is just that way some years, I had one like that a couple of years ago with no rhyme or reason. I figure they should be allowed the odd 'off' one. :) I say this for any and all zones.... improve your soil and plant them directly into the ground so you do not have to fertilize or water so much. A good root system will give you a good plant and good flowers. I fertilized mine for only the second( and last) time this year the last week in August. That is really my only 2 'secrets'.

Something killed your plant but I don't think it was repotting. Are you using a well draining potting mix? If you have root rot, especially during the warm months when a plant had been doing well it sounds more likely that it suffered from "wet feet". Make sure you don't use a potting mix that is moisture retentive and unless you are using something like Fafard or a similar mix ammend it with perlite, sharp sand or something similar to promote good drainage. A cutting that had been growing since the summer would be considered an established plant and brugs are surprisingly hardy. They'll establish a strong root system pretty fast during warm weather. It doesn't take long for a brug to outgrow a small container. They won't die from being rootbound but they won't thrive either. My mature container brugs are in mainly 25-30" diameter pots and even then they need to have the rootball reduced periodically because I refuse to use larger containers. It's easier to grow them directly inground or to sink a smaller pot with holes cut into the sides. You can use a sharp spade to sever the roots that have grown outside the container if you want to lift them. As for rooting cuttings I think you get the best results if they are put directly into soil but that also takes up the most space which many of us don't have. Just make sure the soil is barely moistened. Don't allow it to dry out completely but make sure it's not wet either. Water rooting is very easy and works best with mature (slightly woody) cuttings. Fire Ants......run! I have no idea. Thankfully that's one pest that hasn't reached this area. Hope you have better luck with new cuttings and getting rid of the fire ants.

My first Hydrangea is now in the ground for more than 25 years. At this point, I keep it for sentimental reasons only. It's gotten so THICK with canes that if I wrap it in my usual cage, I have to get everything so tight in there that I think I may actually be suffocating the plant. I've not had good luck overwintering it in recent years. This past winter I didn't even bother with it. If I were you, I'd consider taking a cutting or digging out a portion of your sentimental one and essentially start over. It would indeed be the same plant, so you could keep your sentiment. But I can understand sentiment. I should get rid of my first Hydrangea, but I'm not. For a long time I would cut back the old canes completely to the ground in the Fall. I'd only leave canes that had shot up from low points on the canes or from the crown. They would have grown all summer and would end up giving me great flowering the next year. I'd have very long stemmed flowers, too, that I had cut. The big problem with this technique is that you end up with weaker stems than you would otherwise and next summer they'd be weighted down to the ground with their flowers. I've found that, for my zone, I can usually prune as hard as I want up until about Fourth of July, just to be easy to remember, and not hurt the flowering potential for next year. After that, the buds start setting for next year and you start running into that problem. (But then I've cut some "nikkos" back to the crown in the Fall and on some I'd get great flowering and on some I'd get none. Do I really understand this? NO.) So, here is another method for you to consider to keep it smaller, at least in height. Another thing I've experimented with is to prune all the wimpy growth completely out and just end up with a few stout canes over time. This was interesting, but you end up with an artifical looking Hydrangea and the few stout canes start looking rather strange. But with this technique, more or less, you could develop a plant that wasn't so crowded. I don't know though. I wish I could help you more. I'd like an answer to the question you have, too! Hay