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Hydrangea Help
caineskid
Posts: 2
my husband and I planted this on Saturday., i broke the root ball up like i was taught when planting flowers and watered it well. Its been sitting on our deck for 6 weeks in a pot because I got put on bedrest soon after i got it. (I am 36 weeks along now) Its an LA Dreamin. It looked great. I kept it watered. We live in GA so we have lovely GA clay but we it has great top soil on top plus I added soil to it when we planted it. We watered it well after planting and we have been trying to water it regularly... it now looks terrible 
is it dead? Its SO HOT RIGHT NOW. Can i save it. My mom gave it to me for my birthday. Can someone please tell me what to do to save it?
0
Posts
maybe in that heat, its just getting too much sun to cope with, after just being planted. Could you move it to somewhere out of direct sun until it cools down and then if needs be move it back to where you want it when it cools down in the autumn. Having lived in Kansas for a few years, I can totally appreciate that heat, and no wonder its struggling.
Hope you can get it to recover soon.
PS I'm no expert by the way, just guessing at what to do. Someone else on here might have a better idea.
Hydrangea's aren't big fans of heat as Peanuts said and instead prefer more shade/half shade areas. They also require a lot of watering, we had 24c here with direct sun and mine started wilting in the afternoon.
Shade and moisture is what they need. The clue's in their name - hydra means water. It's a very sad looking specimen just now. I'd lift it from there and get it back in a decent pot with soil, not just compost, water it thoroughly and often, and keep it somewhere shady to recover.
If it does, and it should, let it mature a bit and then find the right place for it to be planted
Where's GA ?
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I took it to mean Georgia, USA. No idea really though.
It could be that some of the roots were damaged when you broke up the rootball so the plant isn't able to take up water very well, but as mentioned above, hydrangeas like to be in the shade and prefer damp soil so the advice to repot the plant and wait until it is more mature before planting out again is very sound. You can encourage the plant to become more bushy by pruning it a little. As it is so droopy it might be a good idea to prune it back by a few inches anyway to give it a chance to recover.
Sounds as though you are going to be very busy in a few weeks time.
Thanks Guys, it gets morning sun then shade the rest of the day. GA is Georgia. ?. I gave it a good watering this afternoon and most of it perked back up and its got lots of new growth at the bottom. I am gonna prune back the burnt and dead stuff off. My neighbor has big ole hydrangeas in his front yard so i know its an ok place for them. Just freaked a little bit when it looked so sad. We just got a good rain also, so i am hoping that it will establish well