Endless trouble with Endless Summer Hydrangeas

13 years ago

This is my second year gardening so I am still very much a novice. However, this year I was bitten by the hydrangea bug so I decided to buy some and try them out.

The first ones I bought were the Endless Summer varieties. I purchased a Twist N Shout, Blushing Bride, and an Original Endless Summer to go on my screened porch. A few weeks later, I saw a darling, Forever and Ever hydrangea at Lowe's and scooped that up as well.

All hydrangeas were doing fairly well until I started noticing some pesky holes in their leaves. I had this same problem on my roses so I bought some Ortho Ecosense 3-in-1 Rose and Flower Care and sprayed it on all of the plants that had been affected.

Simultaneously, I was debating moving my Twist N Shout and Original Endless Summer hydrangeas to a partially sunny shade just outside of my screened in porch. The morning after the great "spray down" with the Ortho Ecosense I placed the Twist N Shout and Original outside to give them a trial run in their new spot. Big Mistake. A few hours later it looked as if someone had scorched these two plants with a blow torch. I was devastated but thought that perhaps removing the spent leaves and cutting back the damage would revive my babies. I even replenished their soil with Miracle Grow Water Control Potting Mix and added some 10-10-10 fertilizer the next weekend.

The Twist N Shout and Original hydrangeas look like they belong in an ICU unit now. They are barely hanging on with a minimal amount of new growth. The Twist N Shout was hit the hardest. It seems that any new growth turns brown and dries up.

The Forever and Ever Hydrangea is fine, but I cut back the dead flowers, fertilized it and the Blushing Bride as well, and it won't rebloom.

What am I doing wrong? Please help me save my hydrangeas. Do I need to put them all in the ground. Right now the Twist N Shout and Original are under the porch because I don't know what to do with them. I want them to live, and I have searched and searched for a problem like mine on the internet, but I can't find one that seems similar. I live in SC, and we are having a heat stroke summer so far this year.

If anyone can help me, I would be eternally or "endlessly" grateful. :)

Yours truly,

Erica

Novice gardener with a not so endless hydrangea

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Comments (4)

miclino
13 years ago
In my limited experience, a few hours of sun should not have killed the plant. Watering well and shading the plant would probably be enough for it to recover. The fertilizer was probably not a good idea when all the plant needed was water. No idea about the original problem though.
sue36
13 years ago
Water well, move them to shade or dappled sun/shade, if it is a real scorcher put them in the garage for the day, DO NOT FERTILIZE (they come with a ton of it in the pot). Trim off the leaves that are 1/3 or more crispy.

When in pots they can dry out quick, I bet that is what happened. They will likely recover but may not look great this year.

Before spraying with a pest control spray I would find out what was eating them first. Nothing bothers mine, but I do have roses and hibiscus that get totally munched on.
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I have had the same luck with Endless Summer Hydrangea as Jackz41!! Endless Summer is rated as Zone 4. In northern Wisconsin, I saw that many people did not have good luck with Endless Summer blooming before mid-July up here, this could be a problem elsewhere in the country too. I have over 65 roses so I took a wintering trick from my roses to get Endless Summer to bloom early! I bend the plants completly over and hold them down with bricks or larger rocks, in early November after a hard freeze(this can be hard as the shrubs get bigger, but you can do it carefully) I then cover them lightly with oak leaves and let snow fall on them! As we get lots of snow up here it has worked well for winter protection so the tips do not freeze! I have not had any mold problems with this trick! I have been growing Endless Summer since they first came out on the market, I have seven of them some just planted 1.5 ago. The older plants are around 3.5-4'high-4' wide. They get 4-5 hours of direct sunlight and filtered for several more hours, I also fetilize them with the same fertilizer I use for roses in lesser amounts. They start blooming in the middle of June with lots of blooms in all colors depending on your soil. I just add nail filings to make some of them more blue and leave the rest of the plants alone so I get colors from blue to lavender, purple and pink! Later in summer the mature blooms turn more green, then in fall they take on a burgandy hue with the green. They are really pretty, hardy and long blooming and great cut flowers when dryed as they mature in the Fall. Along with my pee-gee and several annabelle's (my hydrangea work horse) I love my Endless summer hydrangea's just as much as my roses!!
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jenswrens: have patience. If you notice on the tag, it says it will reach 3-5'. Here in Minnesota, it will reach about 3' and the same spread, a nice round ball ultimately. The 5' size is for those southerners with much longer growing seasons (Georgia, etc) It will take a good 3 years for your ES to really put on a great root system and get settled in its spot. You'll find after a few years quite a few shoots coming from the ground, and during some springs, some buds shooting from the stems at the base as well - this will depend on how cold the winter is and if we have good snow cover. yes, it will reliably bloom on new wood. I can vouch for this - I work at Bailey and was involved early on in the introduction of this plant. We have had test plants at the nursery, in our test block since 1987. Expect your first flowers in mid to late June (if it ever warms up and plants grow!). That frost that you mentioned is a big bummer, but it has happened to almost everyone's plants. They'll grow out of it. Keep it well watered, and give it some acid based fertilizer this spring. good luck. hope you enjoy your ES PP
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Bonnieann, I am sorry I forgot to tell you how great your Endless Summer arrangement looks. My DD has a couple of those plants in her yard, I think I should make an arrangement for her. I am in Zone 5b. The Annabelle plants do get full sun for almost the entire day. The PeeGee plant is on the north side and my garage blocks the sun from the west so that plant is in the shade most of the day. I don't do anything special as far as growing the plants. In the spring I wait until the buds start appearing on the stems then I cut off top portion and remove any dead stalks. As far as drying the flowers, I just leave them on the plant until they are pretty much dry on their own and then cut them and put them in a vase without water. I don't save them from year to year. They are fine for the time I have them in my arrangement. PeeGee, the blooms on both types of my hydrangea plants are smaller this year than other years. After a long colder than normal winter, we had a very cold spring and below average summer. I think that affected the size of the blooms. As an aside, here is my favorite floral arrangement, that I photographed last weekend. Here is a link that might be useful: Drying hydrangeas This post was edited by badgergal on Wed, Oct 8, 14 at 1:16
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@luis_pr Thank you so very much for the info! I have seen people plant ES on the ground in the spring and dig up and put in a pot and bring inside for the winter. For me, it is almost not possible. 1, the plants are very big now, 3 ft wide and tall, as I bought the 4 gallon ones in the spring. oh well. 2, too much trouble for me and too much shock for the plant. 3, i dont have indoor space and big enough window to give them the light to keep them happy insdie. Artificial light is too much set up again. SO after some search, i will be use the cardboard box method, i think. Here are tentative steps: please help me better this process if something wrong in the procedure lol. Zone 3/4, Edmonton 1) After tree leaves fall, collect leaves in plastic bags. 2) When ES hydrangea leaves are brown and dried, covered them with a cardboard box, fill in dried leaves. 3) Tape the top of the cardboard box, to seal. 4) Secure the bottom with rocks or garden staples. 5) Wrap the box with brown burlap. 6) Wrap again the box with black landscape fabric, to absorb warmth from the sun. 7) Sit for the winter to be over, hopefully lots of snow cover. 8) Remove protection around last spring frost, on May 15 ish. 9) If Frost come back after the fact. using white drop cloth for temporary cover. I also attached a pic of my blue ES (the original) in my yard this year. Isn't this blue out of this world!
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dondeldux z6b South Shore Massachusetts
13 years ago
Hi Erica, I'm thinking it was a combination of more fertilizer (which they don't need the first year), the insecticide spray, and the sun! Is it possible that he tender leaves did not like the spray on them and burned in the sun! You may have to cut them back and wait for new growth, but no more bug spray and limit the sun until they get used to it. New plants in pots look great when you buy them but they don't acclimate themselves to the elements for a while. I have a bed of 6 hydrangeas in shade most of the day but they get 2/3 hours of sun in early afternoon and this year we added 3 new plants to the planter and the flowers burned to a crisp on the new ones and the older ones that had been in the ground for a year or so sailed through the heat and sun with no problems! The temps went up to low to mid 90's for several days, and all the hydrangeas in my yard wilted from the heat but the flowers perked up in the evening. Don't be afraid to prune them back if necessary, it will thicken the plant for you and you should still get some blooms later on the remontant types. Good Luck!

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captainobvious
13 years ago
My recently planted Hydrangeas have had similar problems to yours Erica. I had them in the pots they came in for about 3 weeks before settling on places to plant them. They all were doing fairly well up until that point (some better than others).
Once planted, the locations had a LOT of sun exposure and leaf ends started getting crispy, flowers started browning. I was watering nearly every day to replenish them, but the sun has just been too much. What I ended up doing was making some temporary shade for the Hydrangeas while they get a chance to acclimate and grow some root structure. I dead headed and clipped burnt leaves to help them out. (link below on what I did)
They've only been up a week, but I see slight improvement already. Might be worth considering as its a very cheap and easy do-it-yourself fix. Best of luck to you !

-Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Temporary shade I whipped up...

Endless trouble with Endless Summer Hydrangeas

Comments (4)

miclino

sue36

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