{"id":1622,"date":"2012-08-07T17:37:42","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T16:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/?p=1622"},"modified":"2023-09-04T14:03:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T13:03:02","slug":"plant-of-the-month-for-august-hydrangea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/plant-of-the-month-for-august-hydrangea\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant of the Month for August &#8211; Hydrangea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our plant of the month for August is Hydrangea.<\/p>\n<p>Hydrangeas are wonderful plants and often under rated; they flower for months right up to the frosts, they grow to a good sized shrub so are ideal for adding structure to your borders and they can be used as a cut flower too.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 580px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"5\" cellpadding=\"5\" align=\"left\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The most popular hydrangea are\u00a0Hydrangea macrophylla Mopheads which have large ball-like blooms. Hydrangea macrophylla Lacecaps have a flat flower-head with an outer ring of large flowers surrounding a central group of smaller flowers.Hydrangea paniculata have cone shaped flowers.<\/p>\n<p>The main colours of the flowers are white, pink and blue but they often bloom in shades of lilac and purple. Take a look below at a great selection from Crocus.co.uk.<\/p>\n<p>If you buy a blue Hydrangea and want to keep the flowers blue it is best to grow it in acidic soils with a pH of 5.5. When grown on neutral soil (pH 7) the flowers will tend to turn more mauve or even pink.<\/p>\n<p>To maintain the blue flowers keep the soil acidic by treating with aluminium salts or grow your plant in a large container filled with ericaceous compost and feed regularly with a special ericaceous feed.<\/p>\n<p>White or pink hydrangeas are happy growing in neutral or alkaline soil.<\/p>\n<p>To care for your hydrangea:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In dry weather water regularly and soak well if there are signs of distress<\/li>\n<li>Keep the flower heads on over winter and remove them back to a strong pair of buds, in spring after the danger of frost has passed<\/li>\n<li>Take out diseased shoots<\/li>\n<li>Mulch young plants with a well-rotted manure or compost in spring<\/li>\n<li>Once established, remove a quarter to a third of the shoots to the base of the plant<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hydrangeas are wonderful plants and often under rated; they flower for months right up to the frosts, they grow to a good sized shrub so are ideal for adding structure to your borders and they can be used as a cut flower too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1637],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-flowers-and-plants","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16184,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/16184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningregisterblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}