Would you be interested in a potted white lilac bush or a potted lavender lilac bush,if not please check my trade list as i have other things to trade,i would really love to have a hydrangea bush. e-mail me,PLMK,Sheila

Color looks too intense to be a Nikko....yg

It is always possible the plant was mislabeled, but generally even an acid-lovers fertilizer formulation is not sufficient to change soil pH significantly if your soil is skewed towards the alkaline and/or heavily buffered (ie. clay soils). Repeated annual applications may help, but I'd try agricultural sulfur or aluminum sulfate and a good wood or sawdust mulch. An added note: it sometimes takes several seasons before soil chemistry is altered enough to produce the flower color you desire and Nikko tends to be more of a pale blue under the best of circumstances.

Unfortunately, you will have to sacrifice the blooms if you want to prune now. Hydrangeas like Nikko Blue bloom on old wood. Their flower buds develop starting in July-August so pruning now will remove the (now) invisible flower buds that will produce blooms in Spring 2012. Some alternatives, none of which may be perfect.... If cutting them by a large amount (more than a third), you may want to do that in winter when the shrubs are really really dormant. This option is called rejuvenation and you prune in thirds for 3 years only when the plant is dormant: cut the oldest 1/3 stems this year (prune them aaaalllll the way to the bottom); next year, prune the next 1/3; and on year 3, prune the last third. You could prune them this way -for example- every November for three years in a row (or do it every December, January, etc for three years in a row). A variation of rejuvenation: leave the plants alone/unpruned now, let the shrubs bloom in Spring as usual, and then prune them in thirds as described on the next three Springs in a row. However, prune in thirds to the ground a few weeks after the bloomage show has started so you get to see & enjoy some of the show.