Dying hydrangea plants can ruin the look of your beautiful flower gardens. Find out how to revive hydrangeas with this simple trick!
If you’ve ever struggled with sad-looking hydrangea plants, then you definitely need to hear about this! It may just be the thing you need to revive your hydrangeas and make them look like those big, beautiful, summertime flowers that you’ve been dreaming about! My gardens look amazing now after I figured out how to revive hydrangeas.
a little while ago, I shared a few ideas for different ways that you can use baking in the garden. One of the suggestions was to try using a weak solution of baking soda in water on certain flowering plants. I’ve been testing this little trick out and it was looking pretty promising, but now I’m absolutely certain that it’s made a huge difference with my hydrangeas, so I have to share it with you!
Why are my Hydrangeas Dying?
I know how many of my fellow hydrangea lovers are out there and how many, like me, have suffered the brutal disappointment of less-than-stunning hydrangea plants. If this sounds like you, you’ve got to try this one!
I planted a couple of fairly large hydrangea plants about 4 years ago. According to the label, they were supposed to grow quite large, so I was really looking forward to having them be a major focal point of both my front yard and my backyard. Well. You know how this goes. The first year, they didn’t do much. They maybe even suffered a little damage and went down in size a little. The second year, same thing. The third year, same thing! What in the world? I kept waiting for them to get established and take off, but they just seemed to stay the same size, or maybe even get a little smaller every year.
What was worse was that one of the plants started to get brown, crispy leaves here and there and there were just a ton of flies and bugs always all around it. I tried all kinds of different things, but after reading up on it a bit, I found out that the bugs probably weren’t the problem. A lot of people had buggy hydrangeas and that mostly didn’t affect the plant’s health at all.
How to Revive Hydrangeas
Last year I tried the baking soda trick and it made such a huge immediate difference! For the first couple of months of the growing season, I watered my hydrangeas every 2 weeks or so with a mixture of 1 tablespoon of baking soda for every 2 quarts of water. I usually just split the one big watering can between all five of my hydrangeas, so not too much for each one.
Quick, Positive Results
Within a week I noticed a big difference! The worst-looking plant suddenly shot out in all directions, growing in size by at least 50% in those first couple of weeks. The buds now are so much bigger, healthier, and more abundant than in years past and I can’t wait to see how the blooms look in a few weeks! Even our really sad, tiny little hydrangea that was pretty much toast last year is coming back strong and it’s even trying to flower! These plants all started the season out looking like things were going to be the same as previous years, with those brown leaves and general small size.
Don’t mind my shadow in this picture! The mosquitos were terrible so I had to make a mad dash out to the back yard and back again to get this picture! So we get what we get with this one I guess! 🙂
We’re always a few weeks behind out here, so our flowers aren’t in full bloom yet but they look about a million times healthier than in past years!
Of course, it all comes down to soil. Adding the baking soda to the soil makes it just a little bit more alkaline, which is what these plants are supposed to love. It’s amazing that something so simple could make such a difference!
If your hydrangeas have always been a little sad-looking and you haven’t been able to figure out why, definitely give this one a go!
Do you have a trick you swear by for beautiful hydrangeas? Did you successfully revive hydrangeas in your garden?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.