Garden Tip:

Changing Hydrangea Bloom Color

French hydrangeas (H. macrophylla) offer gardeners the unique opportunity to manipulate the color of their blooms.  Here are the basics to this interesting process:

1. White-blooming French hydrangeas will always be white; their color cannot be changed.

2. The color of blue and pink-blooming hydrangeas depends on how much aluminum is present in the soil, and therefore available to the plant to absorb.  Acidic soils (low pH) allow plants to absorb more aluminun.  Alkaline soils (high pH) make aluminum less available to plants.

3.  Since it is easier to add aluminum to the soil than remove it, it is easier to change blooms from pink to blue.

4.  For blue blooms, add aluminum sulfate to your soil several times a year.  You can also lower soil pH by adding coffee grounds.   For pink blooms, add lime to the soil several times a year.  This raises the soil pH, and allows aluminum to be absorbed more easily.

5.  For blue blooms, use a high-potassium fertilizer.  For pink blooms, use a high-phosphorus fertilizer. (12-6-6 = N-P-K = Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium)

6.  The easiest way to ensure your hydrangeas bloom the color you want is to grow them in large pots, so you have complete control over the soil and nutrients.

7.  Hydrangeas planted near foundations and hardscapes will be difficult to change to blue, since lime will leach out of these structures and raise the soil pH, producing purple or pinkish blooms.

8.  It is nearly impossible to change the intensity of the blooms' color (deep pink, deep blue).  Intensity is mostly dependent on the plant's heredity.  Fertilizing your hydrangeas twice a year can help, as healthier, happier plants tend to have more intensely colored blooms.

Sun Tolerant Hydrangeas
Hydrangea paniculata varieties

The "panicled" hydrangeas (the name has to do with the type of bloom) can be seen blooming all over our area from late June through the summer.  While the blooms look similar to oakleaf hydrangeas (H. quercifolia), these are members of a whole different group, Hydrangea paniculata.  These hydrangeas bloom later in the summer than the oakleaf and French, and are much more sun tolerant.  Common members of this species include: PeeGee, Limelight, Tardiva, Pinky Winky and Little Lamb.  Most blooms open white, with the exception of the limelights, which start out lime-green, and all fade to gorgeous shades of pink by late summer.  These are durable, fast-growing hydrangeas, with summer blooms so beautiful no garden should be without one.  Combine with butterfly bush, coneflowers and rudbeckias for a beautiful cut-flower arrangement. Prune heavily in late winter to keep your plants looking full and neat.

Sweet Summer Fruit

Figs are so easy to grow!

During July you will find delicious figs ripening on trees all across the south.  If you have never stood under the sprawling limbs and large leaves of a fig (Ficus carica), with the birds and wasps, and enjoyed their freshly picked flavor, you just haven't lived.  A southern favorite for generations, they are so easy to grow there's no reason not to have one in your own garden.  We have the favorite 'Brown Turkey' fig in stock, as well as a newer variety, 'LSU Purple,' that sports purple skin and sweet, strawberry-colored flesh.  Given enough space, figs are grand and beautiful multi-trunked trees, allow 15 to 30 feet of space and you won't be disappointed!  Prune lightly in winter, removing dead or crossing branches.