Hydrangea Chlorosis

I have an old Hydrangea (guessing 10 years).  It has stopped blooming for a good number of seasons now.  And since I'm such pro worms, I never did apply chemical fertilizer.

Here's before (May) and after (July) shot.  What has happened is that my plant has developed chlorosis or discoloration of the leaves due to some nutrient deficiency (nitrogen, magnesium or iron).

I've read that soil alkalnity impacts the ability of plants to take in those nutrients.  Given all the egg shells and banana peels I've dumped in the pot over the years to try and get it to bloom, I'm guessing the soil's pretty alkaline by now.

To remedy the discoloration, I've added some vinegar to the water I use and I've also added a good amount of coffee grounds.  Finally, my rabbits also contributed a substantial amount of old hay and hundreds of poop.

Apart from the addition of organic content, I've also pruned the stems very aggressively.  Interestingly, I just plugged the cuttings in soil somewhere in the backyard.  While most died, a couple actually rooted.  I've moved one of those cuttings to a hydroponic set-up, but that's a story for another day.

I honestly thought greening up the leaves will be faster but it took all of two months before the picture can tell the difference.   Next stop is to try and make it bloom (years in the making and going).

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MY MOPHEAD HYDRANGEA IS NOT BLOOMING

Wow, I just realized that my hydrangea is now seven years old.  It's hands down my oldest plant alive.  The problem is that it hasn't bloomed in about 3-4 years.  Well this year I finally sat down and tried to figure it out.  Since it was very prone to wilting, I placed it under a well shaded tree.  It turns out it needs some sunlight in order to flower.  So I pruned the calamansi tree that shades it.

Furthermore, the last time it bloomed, it had pink flowers. I bought it specifically because it had lavender blooms.  To fix that, I also mulched it with some banana peels since supposedly potassium turns it blue.

If you look at the picture, it does look pretty big now -- just no flowers.  Well let's see in a few months if it blooms (I expect March or so).

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Hydrangea Pot Vermicomposting

As I mentioned in a prior post, my mophead hydrangea plants are situated in front of my house.  When I sweep the floor (filled with dust, hair, skin cells, dead insects), I promptly pour the contents as hydrangea mulch.  I would partially the dirty mulch credit for the hydrangea's continued health.  However, since I also throw some food scraps there (lemon, onion, other fruit peels), I've been seeing roaches much too frequently in the area, not to mention gnats.  So I changed strategies.  I covered the dirty mulch with lots of coffee grounds and paper scraps and put in a couple of African Nightcrawlers.   Well this isn't my first try at pot vermicomposting, so I know this could work.   I've also vermicomposted using what I call a reverse mulch technique with live plants on top (mango, cat's whiskers, habanero, etc).  Anyway, I continued caring for the plant, not really paying too much attention to the mulch.  I've thrown at least 20 roaches into that pot over the months so you'd understand why I don't want to touch it much.  That was until today.

For the past couple of days (after over a month since the mulch), I've been noticing that the soil on the pot (yes, I can see soil already) seemed grainy.  That's a good sign if you're used to seeing vermicompost.  So today, I got my trusty trowel and snooped around.  There were lots of worms and at least two inches of vermicompost on top.  Not bad huh?  The more you ignore them, the more they thrive.  I'm pretty sure most of them were African Nightcrawlers and not earthworms.  I can almost distinguish them physically now.  And besides, they were lolling around organic matter.  Earthworms tend to stay in soil, correct?   Since I was running low on ANC inventory anyway, I gathered an ice cream container full of worms and vermicompost so I can easily fill an order for a worm bin.  I also replaced the lost mass with about two handfulls of shredded paper along with a few scoops of used coffee grounds.

With my recent successes in pot vermicomposting, my thoughts have been wandering towrads my mom's absolutely large pots at the back.  I am thinking about the possibilities.    

Until next month! 

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Herb Garden Updates 2

Let me welcome my new Purple Basil!  Actually, this is my second one, but my first purple basil was just purple on the underside of the leaves. The first one's still alive and I'm still waiting for the plant to turn purple.  This second one has a more obvious purple shade.  I recently repotted it in a container with some worm castings and coffee grounds.  Hopefully that would be enough to finance my plant's growth.

Then there's the Habanero which I've been talking about a lot lately.  You've got to love it for recovering and bearing fruit the past few months.   On almost a daily basis, I add all sorts of yard trimmings to the pot since the soil level keeps going down.  Those worms have been working faster it seems.

Finally, let me show you my mophead hydrangea again.  They've been flowering lately, but both plants are giving me pink blooms.  I'm not sure why when I've been adding supposedly acidic coffee grounds to turn the blooms blue.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.  These plants have been wilting several times a week due to the summer heat.   Several times during the week, I even put an upside down umbrella hanging by the window just above the plants to give them some shade.  It helps.

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Hydrangea Blooming

Remember the hydrangea plants that we bought in Tagaytay about two years ago?  Well they're a lot bigger now.  Just look at the leaves on the first one.  It's bigger than my hand I think!  And look at the other one.  It's blooming.  However, two years ago I bought it with bluish flowers.  Now it's blooming pink.  When I read up on this months ago, the color of the blooms is determined by the PH of the soil.  Well this means my soil is relatively acidic.  I've got to add more eggshells for the next bloom (once a year).  And do you know what sort of fertilizers I give these plants?  Well it so happens the pots are really big and they're situated right beside my front door.  So, whenever I sweep, I put the contents there (hair, dead skin, dust, dead insects).  Not bad  huh?  My dirty mulch has really been feeding the soil.  They're all biodegradable anyway.

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Hydrangea in Heat

It's been a while since I talked about my hydrangea.  The last time, I had a small cutting that finally rooted after months of being in a glass of water.  Sadly, that cutting died after I transplanted it in soil because I was confined for a week and no one really took over my watering chores.  It burned to death.   Anyway, I still have my big hydrangea.  Just for fun, I took pictures of it while it was melting under the heat of noon.  Check out the pictures of the same plant.  The first one was taken at around 11:30 AM and the second one at 4:00 PM.  Note that I watered this plant early in the morning. 

Apparently, the plant recovers even without watering.  Once the weather cools, the leaves become fresh again.   Nonetheless, I guess it helps to heavily water the hydrangea plant before it gets hit by the heat.  After all, I got this plant from Tagaytay, so it may still not be used to the Manila heat.

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Hydrangea Propagation: Stem Cutting

It's been a while since I tried propagating my hydrangea.  I've had about 5-6 cuttings in the past and almost all of them wilted in a week.  However, one survived.  For about a month and a half, it remained fresh in a glass of water, but it wasn't rooting or growing any new leaves or stems.  Now, about three months later, the stem cutting is finally ready for planting.  If you see the picture, it has new stem and leaf growth and it has nice white roots.  I'm not sure why this one survived.  I didn't use honey or any rooting hormone. As a matter of fact, the stem cutting which I smeared with honey died very quickly.  I think ants ate it.  Maybe my shears was clean when I cut it.  I really don't know.  I do know now that stem cutting works for propagating hydrangea.  It has a low survival rate, but it can work.

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How to Propagate Cuttings with Honey

If you read enough gardening material on the Net, you will find that a lot of plants are propagated by cuttings.  Some cuttings are easy to root like herbs.  For example, Basil and Mint cuttings will easily root in a glass of water.  Other plants are more challenging.  For example, my flowering plants (petunias, mums and hydrangeas) will supposedly need a little extra.  In most cases, I find that other gardeners dip cuttings in a rooting hormone before sticking them into little pots with sterile medium (I always see peat, perlite and vermiculite). 

But some of us don't want to spend for a rooting hormone because we're gardeners with a tight budget.  I've read that you can just boil parts of a willow tree (any variety) and that will have the same components as a rooting mix.  But then again, have you ever seen a willow tree in Manila?  So I continued searching and found that the next most frequently mentioned rooting hormone alternative is HONEY.

Mophead Hydrangea Update and Propagation

After learning that my May Flores was actually a Mophead Hydrangea, I started researching on its care.  Apparently, Hydrangeas generally require shade or filtered sunlight. So I moved them from the sunniest part of the garden to my front porch.  The only sun they'll get there is indirect beams.  After a few days, I noticed that the leaves were much greener and no longer susceptible to wilting even at high noon.  As for the blooms, you'll notice that they're a light shade of blue now.  Beautiful, right?