Looking good there, Casagrande! Mine has not bloomed yet, but should soon. They really have beautiful blooms!

You have a wonderful plant there--it will grow quite large.

A word of warning: if it behaves the way mine did, it will NOT turn half pink or any pink for that matter for the first few years. I think mine was 3-4 years old before any signs of pink started appearing.

The good news is that even as a pure white bloom, it is gorgeous!

Here is the first time my VS actually bloomed white and pink.
{{gwi:291306}}


I repeat: It's a wonderful plant--enjoy!

Kate

dublinbay...wow.wow.wow!!! I can wait three years!!!!!!! I am two years on this property now, and I soon realize that these hydrangeas are slow to show their beauty....I have two that I started from cuttings 2 years ago.....that just now have popped their heads out of the ground. I was ready to give up on one of them and plant right over the spot, when lo and behold about a week and a half ago it started to grow. so I have learned to be patient with these. but oh my, yours was certainly worth the wait. thanks for sharing.

Mine turned pink from the get-go. This is it's second year (last year). This year it's again gotten huge. Grows very fast.

chardie: thank you. that is encouraging. I should know fairly soon what mine will do. I have buds on the ends of almost every branch! I will post pictures when it blooms.

My SV bloomed the first year and started white then to pink. I love it. In the North East Coast it blooms later.

WOW! Dublinbay & Chardie, your Vanilla Strawberry hydrangeas are GORGEOUS! I have one too & can't wait for it to bloom. This is my 2nd year with it. Last year it bloomed so heavily that the young stems couldn't support the blooms. I bought it at our local nursery (it was a leftover there from the year before), & I'm thinking one of the employees may have weakened the stems by pruning it too severely. So I'm hoping for stronger stems this year.
Thanks for sharing your pictures of your wonderful hydrangeas!

does anyone know if the ph of the soil is important for this hydrangea?

I don't believe soil ph affects this hydrangea at all. It is a paniculata hydrangea. The macrophylla hydrangea are the ones that turn pink or blue depending on soil ph. The macrophylla hydrangea (and hydrangea arborescens Annabelle) also bloom that first half of the summer in my zone 6 (Kansas), whereas the paniculata hydrangeas bloom the second half of the summer. So if you have at least one of each, you will have hydrangeas blooming all summer and well into autumn. Cool!

Kate

This post was edited by dublinbay on Wed, Jun 18, 14 at 15:14

kate.........thank you! I am learning so much about these lovely bushes. I will have blooms until autumn, wow! and my soil is very acidic so it is nice to know I can still gets pinks and whites........

Thank you all for sharing your experiences with these beauties! I love seeing the pictures. :o)

I planted two of these this spring- one on either side of our front door and I just love them. Can't wait to see blooms on them someday!

thegardenat902: please post pictures when they do..

Oh my goodness! It's worth the wait. I have three that will
bloom this year. Already, I know that I have to move them
to have more space for them to grow. Glad that you shared
your pics.

pearlgirl: we hope you do too!

How big do they get? I got a 3 gallon last year and I planted it right next to the light post, which is about 6-7ft tall. I really hope it doesn't swallow up the light post... LOL

If it ever gets that tall you can trim back to about 2' in late Fall and it should take a year or more to get back to that height.

casagrande - I will most definitely post pictures! I'm so anxious for them to bloom! Fingers crossed for hopefully next summer. :o)

This might be a little "off the subject," but I have a question. Last year I planted a Vanilla Strawberry in a big container and placed it on my patio. It started growing immediately and that's the truth! I pruned it just a little big to get the dead off before summer. It appears we all had a problem with the cold weather. This plant is beautiful even without the blooms. I have a few buds that should bloom this weekend. I noticed yesterday that there were strange weeds coming up between the bricks where VS is planted and they look like that's what they are. Is this possible or am I totally mistaken? They are growing rapidly and I hope that's what they are. Any ideas?

Can't help you there, odie. Sorry.

joopster, VS is a tall and wide hydrangea, if I remember correctly from my earlier research--maybe like 8 ft tall and wide at maturity? Mine is several years old now and is probably about 4-5 ft tall and at least that wide. Maybe wider. Paniculata hydrangeas are big plants--at least the ones I'm familiar with.

Hydrangea like Annabelle and the macrophyllas are much smaller than my paniculata.

Kate

odie: a little confused with your post. you said you vs was in a pot. did you plant it in the ground and now you think you have vs cuttings showing up between the bricks? if this is what you are saying, yes, you could very well have seedling growing.....you will know soon enough!!

Sorry for the confusion. My VS is in a big pot on the patio and now I have these tiny plants coming up between the bricks that patio is made of and I think they are baby VS. Is this possible and do they reseed like this?

Thanks!

odie.............I am new at these too, but I would think so. don't pull them out, pot one up and see what happens. what fun!

I seriously doubt those are seedlings of a hydrangea. Can you post some pictures of them? If your pot was next to the walk and roots had escaped the bottom then maybe, just maybe you might have suckers coming up.

hcmcdole: seedlings/suckers......same thing no?

Nope .Suckers are new shoots from the root ball of the existing plant, whereas seedlings are completely new plants from seeds dropped by spent flowers of parent plants (i.e. rose of sharon).

H. quercifolia and arborescens sucker as they can produce shoots from the ground more than a few inches from the nearest old wood.

H. paniculata seldom "sucker" as they tend to produce one main trunk.

H. macrophylla and serrata *kind of* sucker but it takes a while for the diameter of the base to get wider.

Any hydrangea growing naturally from seed outdoors is rare due to not being able to survive winters at a young age. But, it's not out of the question.

Thanks Springwood for showing the difference between suckers and seedlings. I've yet to see any hydrangea seedlings but then maybe all the plants I have are sterile?

Anyone grow hydrangeas from seed?

Ornamental cherry trees often have root suckers that can pop up several feet from the tree. You can dig these suckers and transplant (taking a piece of the mother root with it) and have a new cherry tree. Okame cherry trees are famous or infamous for this. Yoshino to a lesser extent as they often have seedlings.

Thanks dublinbay and Springwood_Gardens. Perhaps I should move it while I still can.

just planted vanilla strawberry....we have had a few days of rain, thank goodness after 90's for a few days. much needed rain for my new hydrangeas. the flowers are just starting to open...........hope I get the white and then pink this year! my soil is very acidic.......but I guess that doesn't matter with these.....very excited for my first year plant. you can see the difference in this shrub in my first picture on this thread...

how far apart should they be planted? i couldn't resist them any more and purchased a few.

bella rosa............I am not an expert, not the one to answer I suppose. I just planted about half a dozen limelights along my back property line and I did them about 5 ft apart. I want them to fill in with no gaps. I just noticed one of my other hydrangeas has these big dark brown and black spots on the leaves...does anyone know the cause of this. I will take a picture and post it.......

Sounds like cercospora leaf spot but it could be rust too. Rust is smaller and more orangey. Leaf spot tends to get a little dark brown, purple or blackish as it progresses.

Here is a link that might be useful: ACES Diseases of Hydrangea

luis pr.................will this prevent the bush from blooming? I do not have any flowers on this bush yet and it is September already...it took a hard hit this past winter here in nc, we had some mornings with under 10 degrees and in the spring I thought it was dead. good thing I didn't dig it out because it grew back right from the ground. but I do not have any flowers.......

No, all things being equal, leaf spot should not prevent bloomage. I have a mophead that came with the house and it has some leaf spot every year and blooms well too.

Now other things could prevent bloomage but I have had some hydrangeas that did not bloom on year one and then did fine afterwards. I could never explain it but assumed the wholesaler's habit of waking them early so they blooom too early had something to do with it. Since VS is a paniculata, and paniculatas are hardy to Zone 3 and they develop flower buds late (June or so), I see no way for ole man winter to have caused problems. Pruning around May-July or soil moisture issues (periods of dry soil then wet soil then dry soil, etc) would tend to cause no blooms in a paniculata.

luis pr..............thank you. I guess I will just have to wait and see what it does in the spring. we have had a super wet summer, perhaps that is why....thank you again..