I learned a miracle trick last night -maybe I’m the last person on the earth to know this.
Bought a bouquet of them at Costco yesterday - my senior HS D2 and her friends planned a baby (boy) shower for one of their advisers today. Got them home cut off the stems a bit and stuck them in a vase of water. An hour later I noticed they started to get droopy. No!!! Not these beautiful flowers!!!
Basically cut off an inch of stem, then slit the bottoms upward about an inch. Boil water and then drop the flowers(actually the stems) in the boiling water - apparently the stems are very woody and do not absorb water well - which is why they droop. I noticed as soon as I submerged the stems in the hot water that there was bubbling around the stems - probably the stems taking in the hot water!
Within a couple of hours they were GORGEOUS! Fully perky and bright. This morning they looked great.
Wow, what a miracle cure! Has anyone tried this before? I’m wondering if it will work with lilacs -they always droop once cut.
I absolutely love hydrangeas. It is SOOOO tempting when taking a walk around the neighborhood to not carry snippers with me and bring home a bunch - some people have massive bushes of them! I have a couple but they are only a couple years old and smaller.
Thank you for that tip. We have a new garden and there are hydrangeas. On my dining room table, in a canton ginger jar, are a bunch of dried hydrangeas from last year. I love them, too.
Yes, Alh, I dry some each fall - love the look of the delicate flower (they usually are pale, light colored once dried) in a solid colored container - I have a couple of Le Creuset solid colored decorative pitchers that I place them in.
Oh, now you’re just trying to make me mad. Who loves hydrangeas? White-tailed deer, that’s who. Miserable rotten forest rats eat the hydrangeas, lilies, and hostas, and leave their little pellets behind. Fie!
I’ve used a hammer to split the bottom of the stems on lilacs so they are better able to drink the water. Place the stems on a hard surface and pound. They still only last about a day and half though,so maybe it’s the hot water that is imperative.
Yes, I also read about the hammer/mallet method. I do think it is weirdly the hot water that is key - I mean, this is BOILING water! But it clearly, magnificently worked!
Count me among the deer haters. Our neighborhood is overrun with herds of deer. It’s a major problem around here. Some towns are having them shot with rifles or arrows. Last week, I was driving along the Boston Post Road, and a deer ran across the street, right in front of me. I narrowly missed hitting it.
I love hydrangeas so much that they are the only non-deer-resistant plants I have. Five white Annabelles. I spray them with the awful smelling stuff and it works pretty well. If I don’t use it they eat them to the ground. I had some sweet woodruff as a ground cover. It’s supposed to be deer-resistant, and they left it alone for a couple of years, then last year I saw a group of them standing in it, eating it like they were at a salad bar.
My mother, who lives in Southern Fairfield County, aka Deer Heaven, has her bushes sprayed every year by a nursery with something that actually prevents the deer from eating them. This after decades of trying all of the other methods out there, none of which work.
My favorite deer story was from a co-worker who lived in Westchester who heard their front door knocker one day. Opened the door to find a deer standing on their front porch eating the wreath attached to the knocker.
Anyone know anything about hydrangea serrata " lemonade"?
It apparently was mislabled at the nursery, cause I can’t find anything about it.
It has lime yellow leaves, but I haven’t seen it in bloom yet.
I planted peewee oak leaf hydrangeas last year under neath the scarlet oak in the planting strip, I’m hoping once they get established they won’t need much.
I have another original to the 1900 era house, lace cap hydrangea on the east side, but since most of my flowering shrubs are evergreen and native, I’m still figuring out the best place for the hydrangeas I have in pots.( Nikko blue & Mathilde Gutges)
Wow, I live in deer country and have almost never had my hydrangeas eaten… Although they did take out a whole bunch of mature hostas once. I wonder if our dog is a deterrent? Nothing stops them in the winter, of course. But lately it doesn’t even matter – no one I know had more than a bloom or two last year because the buds on the branches all died over the winter. I got exactly 2 flowers out of 7 shrubs, and while this year some of the buds survived, most didn’t. We’ve had bad winters before, but it never used to affect the hydrageas.
