Submitted by Judy Leheny
NOW! a tip for preserving Hydrangea flowers: Cut the stem, strip off any leaves, place in about two inches of the following solution: 2T lemon juice , 1T sugar, 1/4 T Chlorox dissolved in 1 quart warm water. Leave it alone out of direct sun. The flowers will slowly dry and you will have a bouquet for the winter.
Keep watering your pots and keep fertilizing them every two weeks. The way the weather is going, they will probably bloom till mid-November. The job of the annuals is to set-seed for next year so keep cutting those flowers and frustrating the plant’s attempts to set seed.
Don’t do any major pruning now - it’s too late and the shrub/tree will produce new wood that hasn’t had a chance to “harden” off therefore leading to death of the new growth. Wait till after bloom time in the spring.
Beware when ordering plants online! My daughter bought me two hybrid Heucheras from Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina. They were not inexpensive . Package shipped Monday, supposed to arrive Tuesday but didn’t arrive till Wednesday. One plant was dead, the other was very badly wilted. Daughter complained to the Nursery and they agreed to ship a replacement for the dead plant. Which arrived, again, nearly dead. I complained and was told that the bushy plants were shipped in their 3” nursery pots filled with a non-organic medium and were watered daily in the nursery. When I pointed out that their business was shipping plants online and should have been shipped in a moisture retentive medium because they were not going to be watered by Federal Express, the woman shrugged it off. So if you do order online (and I have done so before) take care to unwrap the plant immediately and re-hydrate it in a bucket of water overnight.