Today, I started three hydrangea cuttings from my old blue mop-head hydrangea. Three stems, cut from this year's growth, stuck in a plastic 6" pot full of soil. Until they root (let's be optimistic), they will live on the back porch, where I can see them and remember to water them. Looking at them now, I wonder if I've left too much stem and too many leaves.
If - ahem- when they root, I will plant them on the north side of the shed.
Hydrangeas are supposed to be the easiest things in the world to root from cuttings. "Why, all you have to do is pull a low limb down to the ground and lay a brick on it," a friend said.
Yeah. Did that. It didn't survive.
A couple of years ago, I stuck a hydrangea limb in the ground. It lived for 2 seasons, but the past two winters took it out.
That same year, I started about 24 cuttings in solo cups. Some acted like they were going to make it. Come cold weather, on the advice of a professional, I set the cups on the ground and covered them with heaps and heaps of leaves. When I dug them out in the spring, none were alive.
So I've been buying hydrangeas for the past couple of years. So far, so good.
The local greenhouse is having a sale right now. I'll probably end up buying 3 hydrangeas to plant beside the shed, if I can they have blue mopheads.
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