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garden Hydrangeas Container Gardening

Id for the red hydrangea and questions on the blue one

getgoing100_7b_nj

last year

I picked up a couple of blooming hydrangeas from Trader Joe's. They did have tags but the top of the tag for the red one was snipped off. The back of the red tag says propagation is prohibited so it probably still has an unexpired patent. The blooms are dark raspberry red. They are both mycrophylla obviously and from Kirtweiss green house.
The blue one is identified as Brestenberg.The label says it grows to 38 to 48" tall but elsewhere I found it to 5' or 1.5 m. It is reportedly hardy to zone 7, 6a, 5 (with some protection) depending on different sources. Also, flowers on old wood (is that true of all macrophylla?). It had good roots and I just uppotted it from 6" pot to a gallon+ using a mix of pine bark/peat/perlite. Question- how do I keep it the glorious blue it is. How often would it need Aluminum sulfate application and how much. Obviously, I will give it a bigger pot as it fills up its current pot etc but would it be safe to leave it outdoors on the balcony in winters (for the plant and for it to bloom which it does only on old wood)? How big should I expect it to get (I am stingy with pot sizes as I have limited space, the best it can hope for is a 12" pot if it lives long enough). For the red , an ID would help figure out hardiness etc, it is also supposed to get to 36-48" according to KurtWeiss.

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Comments (2)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
last year
The only true red flowered hydrangea in the Kurt Weiss Nursery catalog is one called Red Beauty and that is not under patent. Not prepared to say definitively if the red flowered one IS Red Beauty as the flowers on many bigleaf hydrangeas will look very similar and coloring can be manipulated, specially under greenhouse conditions.

Both are listed as 'medium sized' hydrangeas so 4-5 tall and as wide is expected under good conditions, All macs bloom on old wood and some newer ones will also bloom on current year's growth (these do not claim to be in that category) but the degree of old wood flowering you can expect will be dependent on the winter and mid to late spring temperatures it was exposed to as the latent buds can be easily damaged by cold. I would not leave it out in a container over winter unless it was well protected against cold damage.

If you use a potting soil formulated for acid loving plants, the use of aluminum sulfate should not be required. Otherwise, a solution of 1/2 oz (1 Tbsp) aluminum sulfate per gallon of water can be applied to containerized plants 2-3 times during the growing season.

IMO, a 12" diameter pot is not big enough. My containerized hydrangeas are in 25G pots or larger so a 23" diameter (approx) and 20" depth.
getgoing100_7b_nj thanked gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
getgoing100_7b_nj
Original Author
last year
last modified: last year
Thanks gardengal. Unfortunately, if I were to use such large container s, I will only be able to have a few on my 15'x5' balcony and the condo people might get alarmed and really hamper my fledgling balcony gardening…I just have one large ( for me) container 15" diameter and 21" depth that is being monopolized by HF Young, and a 14" growers pot that grows raspberries in quantities that do not justify the real estate it occupies. Even my peony is in a 12" pot and finally has 6 buds 2 of which are attracting ants so hopefully those two bud will bloom this year.
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From the shape and configuration of the sepals, it looks a bit like 'Fuji Waterfall' (syn. 'Fujiotaki'), which Dirr describes as a "loosely configured mophead". He goes on to describe the flower color as white suffused with blue in acid soils or pink in more neutral soils. Coloring of mature flowerheads can be rather variable depending on climate, amount of sunlight and watering conditions, but the greening followed by reddish tones is not uncommon on a lot of different hydrangeas. A photo of the shrub in blossom during the growing season might be more helpful. And there seems to be some confusion in the labeling of plants with this name - often 'Fuji Waterfall' is described as a lacecap with a cluster of fertile flowers surrounded by the cascading sterile ones. Dirr's photo shows only a loose cascading mass of sterile florets but even fully mophead varieties tend to hide a few fertile florets here and there. I'm not at all convinced that there are not at least two plants going by this name, one also referred to as 'Fireworks' ('Hanabi') or sometimes 'Shooting Star'. These names tend to be used interchangeably but there are hydrangea authorities (Dirr and Barry Yinger among them) who are firm that these are distinct plants.
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