Here's Why Your Hydrangea Isn't Blooming, According To The Grumpy Gardener

About This Episode

Find out why a listener’s hydrangea isn’t blooming. Plus why Grumpy detests vinegar in the garden.

Question Of The Week

"My two-year-old French hydrangea –hydrangea macrophylla– has lots of leaves, but has never flowered. It gets morning sun and afternoon shade. And I fertilize it. Any suggestions?"

Grumpy's Answer: If you prune it in fall or winter, you might be cutting off flower buds for the next year. So, don't prune it then.

1. Pruning: In general, people are way too heavy-handed when pruning this type of hydrangea. Most just need to prune off any dead or spindly branches in the springtime as soon as you see the green buds coming out. And that's about it.
2. Lack of sunlight: Another reason your hydrangea may have not bloomed, it's not getting enough sun. I would make sure that it gets about half a day. And, it's also better if that half a day starts in the morning (laughs) rather than giving it hot afternoon sun.
3. Weather change: If it's already set flower buds and you have some mild weather in the wintertime, and then you get this incredibly vicious freeze from the Arctic, like we got flower buds aren't as hardy as leaf buds. And a lot of times they can be killed. So unless you have a reblooming type, like Endless Summer, if all the flower buds are killed, you're not going to get any blooms, but that's something you just can't control.
   

Gripe of The Week

For some reason, people think that if they ever have any kind of problem in the garden, that magical cure for anything is vinegar. Yes. And vinegar can do anything, you know, kill weeds and stuff. I don't want to get into that part. But one of the dumb things that I have heard about vinegar, they'll say, "Well, I have acid loving plants, and vinegar is acidic. So can I just acidify the soil just by pouring vinegar around the plant into the soil?" That's dumb for a couple of reasons.

1. If you pour too much vinegar around that plant, you might kill the plant. You're also going to kill all the microbes that are in the ground,all those things that are helping break down minerals and make nutrients available to plants, all that stuff that's living in the soil, if you pour vinegar on it, it will kill those too.
2. The other thing is when you're talking about acidifying the soil, keep in mind vinegar is a liquid, okay. You pour it into the soil, okay, and then it's there. And then the next time you water that plant or it rains, it washes- directly out, and you're-back where you started.

So if you're wanting to acidify the soil, buy a product that does it over a period of time. There are fertilizers that will say for acid loving plants. I guarantee they will not include vinegar

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 30 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.