How late can you prune the Macrophylla's and still get bloom? We've talked about this before. Here's some of this year's results.

You may know that I protect my plants over the winter to get them to flower. I pruned some back late last year and overwintered them in one of my mounds. This overwintering thread has all the details if you want them.)

Last summer on August 1 I bought some All Summer Beauties which had grown two feet over the summer after they had been killed back to the ground the previous winter.No flowers, only green stems. Most I cut back immediately about half. Those put on some new growth, maybe a couple of inches or so last summer and then flowered profusely for me this year.

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The one on the left was cut back almost to nothing. The one on the righ to just a few inches.

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I want to see if I can do this to some plants that I leave in the ground. So many times I see that people just throw some leaves on their Nikko and from the base area get nice flowers. And Dirr has said that Georgia growers cut them back pretty hard in something like February and still get nice flowering.

How many times do you hear that you can't cut your hydrangeas back hard in the fall and expect to get flowers the next summer?

Are you confused? Me, too. Hay.