I plan on doing that with several of mine in containers. It may impact next year's flowers but they have just gotten too big and too leggy.

If you are going to be cutting a lot of stems, you may want to use this "opportunity" to find out about when do some of these guys develop the flower buds in your location. Cut a few stems on different weekends and mark them somehow. Then check what happens next Spring. Yeah, too many variables and not terribly accurate for MIT Work but, hey, it may be entertaining to do since we are stuck at home so much nowadays. Hee, hee, hee. Stay safe out there!

gardengal48, talking about hydrangeas in containers... how is your Golden Crane? Shirley has put amazing photos of hers recently (planted in the ground though) and I remember you have (had?) a potted one too, no? How is it doing?

eh, how low I want to cut is below even where the 1st set of leaves are....so the season before dormancy will still have leaves up to that point. So I just need to decide how late/early into the season am I going to remove it's food source..

Feeling a bit better about outdoor gardening, but for a long while, I did not even want to mess being outside . Was scared sh1tl333 about windrift -whatever- from lawn cutting crews, etc.

Actually luis, that did get planted in the ground. But I left it at my previous residence so I have no idea how it is doing. I was not overly taken with the plant so not inclined to add to my current garden. Which is already very well populated with numerous starts of macs provided by Shirley :-)

GG. Re: the potted hydra. By choice/preference or just the I ran out of room ;-)

Wanted to try 2 potted , flanking the doors. Blooms are much smaller in pot. I actually thought it was rootbound but with knife in hand and pulling then out this spring, there was still plenty of room in the *plug* for roots to grow without circling.

By choice. I have very little garden real estate available so I use containers for a bunch of stuff I want to grow but don't have room for. I also find very little difference in flower head size between inground planted hydrangeas and those grown in a container.

You must be ontop of your liquid fertz. regimine. I am good about them with the pots in the spring when it's on my radar of -things growing after winter, but soon fall off of being ontop of the fertz for the pots.