Protecting Hydrangeas from Frost

From the winter damage studios of W DIYFM and Ethel MPA , it is time for another hydrangea helping hour of chemical free horticultural hygi ene, you bet your garden. Are your hydrangeas looking hideous, horrible , homely, and horrendous? I'm Mike McGrath and on today's show, I'll reveal what you can do now and in the future to have a display instead of a disaster . Otherwise, it's a fabulous phone call . Yeah, we are going to take that heap and helping of your telecommunic ated questions , comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and jarringly jovial juxtapositions . So stay right where we are, cats and kittens. It's all coming up right after the news . WDIY presents a selection of award winning podcasts that air weeknights from six to seven PM Listen to important conversations regarding art, science, business, health, and more here in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Check our website for new topics and archived programs. W DIY podcasts are on eighty eight point one FM, streaming at WDIY. ORG on the app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Better Garden from the Studios of NPR Station WDIY FM and Bethlehem PA , I am your host Mike McGrath and instead of in the news , this week's opener comes from the vaults , specifically the vaults of the National Geographic , where this story by Boyd Gibbons first appeared in nineteen ninety and has just been brought back to life on april twenty eighth of this year with the title How Peter Raven Transform what we know about plants . Well before dawn, Peter Raven walks out the back door of his house in St. Louis and up a path to a low modern building whose glass reflects the grounds of the oldest institution of its kind in the United States. For the past nineteen years , Raven has been director of the Missouri Botanical Garden , which he has transformed into a landscape of exceptional beauty , but his alarm at what is happening to tropical rainforests has caused the garden to transcend aesthetics and become one of the world's leading centers for tropical botanical research . At least two thirds of all species live in the profuse rainforests of the tropics, yet , as Raven points out, these forests are being rapidly cleared and burned extinguishing genes of evolution , and accelerating climactic warming by loading more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning the trees that absorb carbon dioxide . If this continues he notes the corn belt could become the dust bowl . And I quote, every year this deforestation is destroying an area roughly the size of Illinois , states Raven , about one quarter of all biological diversity in the world , more than a million species will vanish in the next quarter century . No extinction episode of that magnitude has occurred during the past sixty five million years . The great majority of these species and their potential for humanity will disappear unknown . That's why we're dedicated to the collection and identification these plants . Roughly twenty five percent of all prescription medic ines in the United States are derived from plants, including alkaloids from the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar that have arrested childhood leukemia and Hodgkins disease. Oral contraceptives were first found in Mexican yams , and muscle relaxants from an Amazonian vine traditionally used to make poison darts . In any temperate forest such as a grove of oaks or hickories in Missouri , you'll find numerous trees, but only a few different species. Tropical forests are just the reverse Individual populations are small and scattered , but the number of different species enormous . Within walking distance of their camp , David and his colleagues have identified fifteen hundred plant species . He believes that's probably only half of what's out there . Raven believes that the U. S. and other countries for charity and self preservation should help teach the world's poor how to farm cut over land , replant trees , and save what rainforest is left . He especially hopes this will happen on Madagascar, which holds about five percent of the world species , some seventy five percent of which are not found anywhere else . Spread the word about your business or organization to a well informed audience. Become an underwriter with WDIY. Our lineup of NPR news and locally produced programs reaches thousands of engaged listeners in the Leh igh Valley and beyond. Underwriting on WDIY is an affordable and effective way to provide information about your product and services to people who care . To learn more about underwriting opportunities six one zero six nine four eight one hundred or wdiy dot org Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Better Garden from the NPR studios of W DIY FM in Bethlehem PA , I am your host , Mike McGrath and just a little , we will try to heal your hydrange tell you what to do if bad weather threatens next season . Before that , a couple more of your fabulous phone call s at six ten six nine four eight one zero zero extension number three . James, welcome to You Better Garden. Thank you, Mike. Well, thank you, James. How are you, sir? I am well, in you I am hanging in there looking forward to planting my tomatoes finally. My tomatoes have tomatoes on 'em. I'm just waiting on 'em to turn red . So how deep in the south are you? I'm in zone nine B. I'm about an hour and a half north of Galveston. Oh , you're cheater . Yes. You could you can grow year round. Yes, yes, sir. And unapologetic . We northerners have to be tough er . We got to get them in and get them out , not hurt them in a limited amount of time . We have a very long growing season and it is a blessing, yes, sir. All right , so I'm told you are troubled by a weed , if not weeds . Mike, it is stickers. They are taken over the yard. They look kind of like cilantro The top s do, they're bright green and these things are horrible and I am loath to put out wheat and feed. I'll be honest with you short of just I guess taking a taking taking something out there and just pulling them up by hand . I have no idea what to do with this . All right, the first thing I want to mention is a tool because you say you got a dog or dogs , so that's the biggest bird problem you have, right? They're scared to walk through the yard of cells like I am barefooted on a kind of they come back with stickers in their feet. Well, anyway, there's a product out there. It's a block of what looks like a little meteorite or something like that , activated charcoal . But what it is, it's just pocked mark with rough surfaces like on the moon and you rub it over something that got burrs on it and the burrs come off immediately . Tell me about your layout . You have a garden. Is that separate from areas of your landscape? Yes, sir. The garden is off over to itself, yes, sir . Really what you're talking about is just what could be lawn or whatever . What I'm talking about, yes, sir, is the lawn in front of the house where we would be? Yes sir, not in the garden. The garden is , of course, it's overran by weeds and grass We take care of that with a tiller and a hoe. Okay , well when you till up weeds , you got to be careful. You can't do it too often because every time you till you release nutrients into the air, especially nitrogen . You know, you're in a perfect place to solarize . You would seal everything up level it all out perfectly . Do this areas at a time if it's a big area . Cover that area with clear plastic, two mill thick. Yes, Your Honor. And before you do that , you saturate it completely with water . I'm saying you let a hose or a sprinkler on low out there for twenty four hours. You want to turn it into a bog and then you make sure everything is level . You stretch the clear plastic over top , not black plastic. Whoever came up with that idea has destroyed more gardens than I ever could . Clear plastic and then you weigh it down at the edges with bricks or yes or stones and at the end of a growing season where you are , everything in that area is dead . All the weed seeds , perennial weeds , any kind of disease and then you know you just finish off pieces at a time . Your other alternative is to do exactly kind of what you're propos ing to till it all up completely. Now you have a warm season grass. What are you growing Saint Augustine . Okay , so this is the perfect time of year to do it . You can till it all up , break up all the green material you can . You don't have to be perfect , but level it all out until it's level and then scalp it with a lawn mower . And I mean scalp it. I want to see dirt blowing out the back of the mower and then you wait ten days and of course plants are going to come up . So you get yourself a super sharp ho le, the diamond hoe. It's like a razor blade. That's what we have. That's one of my most used tools . Exactly . So ten days you go over these little sprouts with the diamond toe , just slicing across the surface of the soil , maybe going under a little bit , you know , but you're going to get rid of everything that came up . Now most people are done at this point. You have created what's called a stale seed bed because you've destroyed all the living plants the little plants that are coming up now don't have the biomass, they don't have the strength to fight back the way fully established weeds can . So just a simple slice across the top will do it . And if your weeds are especially tenacious , you said you're near Galveston ? We're hour and a half north of Galveston, yes, sir. Okay , yeah, well everything's bigger, right? You may have to do it twice . If you establish a stale seed bed , you do this real quick. This doesn't take a lot of time. You can put in a fresh run of Saint Augustine . I don't think they do that by seed, right? That's just propagated . I know I only know of two ways. That's to buy the square sod, you buy a square sod or you put runners down. That's the only two ways I know to do it . Yeah, that's vegetative. It doesn't grow well from seed . So, you know, there's a little bit of an investment , but you'll get a real lawn out of it that you can walk on and play on and run your dog on . And in the meantime , what I have used they'll show up around my property . What I do is I have a flame weeder . Yes, they're readily available . Burns a mattic, the one they used to make was called the Yarden Garden Torch . Some people will call them outdoor torches. It's real easy. It's a big shepherd's hook that you fit a camp stove , not a grill , a little propane bottle, one of the smaller ones? Yes, sir. On to the short end , you ignite it with a clicker and then you just hover over those plants either when the seeds are forming or even when they're fully formed . And they just either burn up if they haven't established yet or they explode if they're real seeds . You keep doing that and what you do without realizing it is you exhaust the seed bed . If you do this rigorously for a year , they didn't get to drop much if any seed . So you do it again the second year the only problems you're going to have are ones blowing in on the wind and you recognize the plant now as a baby so you can flame weed it, you could spray it with regular household five percent vinegar . There's more and more new products out there. There's a weed killer for instance that's made of iron . I think the original name was iron X . You don't have to do weed and feed and my understanding of Saint Augustine, well wait a minute St. S Aainugtustine is a heavy feeder, isn't it? It's a whatson? A heavy feeder likes food and water. Yes, it does. Yes. Yeah . So I would say knock them out as adults for a year and then get the little guys the next year then feed your lawn compost and water it deeply once a week during dry times . And you know, that's the mistake people make they water their lawns for like twenty minutes a day and the lawn never gets a chance to grow real roots . If you really saturate it overnight , turn the water off when the sun comes up , those roots are saturated with water and they're natur al inclination is going to be to go down deeper into the soil as the water drains out . And Saint Augustine is a tough grass for weeds to get into. It's a very thick grass with underground rhizomes . And then you spend a minimum amount of time on it in the future , and you should be fine. Mr. McGreg, I appreciate your time., man Thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure . I envy your tomatoes . All right, well good luck to you then. Well, it's time for me to take a little break and congratulate all of you what held out and did not plant early this supremely silly season . And if you are one of those wise persons , be sure to install your plants in the early evening , not in the morning when the plants could be burned by their first exposure to the hot sun . Just don't go looking longingly at your land just yet , because we'll be right back to handsome up your hydrangeas and take more of your fabulous phone calls. I'm Mike McGrath and you're listening to You Better Garden from the NPR studios of W DIY F M in Behlehem PS Do you have vinyl albums, forty five's or CDs on your shelves that are taking up space and gathering dust? Why not donate them for a good cause? WDIY will receive profits from the donation and you can claim a tax deduction. For more information, or to arrange for a drop off or pickup, call six ten six nine four eight one hundred or visit wdiy dot org . Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Metro Garden. From the studios of W DIY M in Bethlehem PA , I am host , Mike McGrath coming up later in the show , a lot of you out there are very unhappy hydrangea owners . It was a tough winter for these plants and over the years they become more sensitive to these changes in climate . So we're going to try to tell you what you can do to maybe salvage some flowers this year and especially help you get beautiful blooms in the years to come . But first , a couple of phone calls at six ten , six nine four one hundred extension number three . Mira, welcome to you Better Garden. Hi, Mike, thank you so much for having me on the show. I've been watching listening for a very long time , so I'm really excited to talk to you. Well recently you could have been watching and listening and you know Lord knows what else but thank you and thank you for being had. Where are you? I'm in Columbus, Ohio. Oh , okay . Very good. Nice to hear from that part of the country . What can we do you for? Yeah, so I have had this I have a hedge row of hollies . I'm pretty sure they're the blue princess variety and they've been struggling for several years . Recently, I had an arbist come by to check them out, and he said that they are struggling with canker and that all of them need to come out and that he had suggested some replacement ideas . The hollies are over thirty years old and I can describe you what's going on with them, like what they look like specifically. So I guess I was kind of curious , do they all need to come out? Is this something that's treatable ? If they do come out, how easily is Canker transmissible to any plants that I replace them with? So that's kind of the all good questions. So they've been in the ground thirty years , but you did email us some pictures and they didn't look like thirty year old plants . It's fossils , they're not. I don't even been in this house for six years or so. There were some hollies on the original plans of the house, so I'm assuming that they're the same ones, but it's possible that they've been replaced along the way. , because no offense, but they look like the dog's breakfast . They are yeah, my neighbors keep asking me what my plan is so I got to do something. Yeah , no, I mean, it's I was shocked when I looked at the pictures . I was going, are you sure these are Holly's? You know ? Yeah, no, I'm definitely sure . They look like hollies. They produce really and they're still producing berries. I used more hollytone fertilizer over the last couple of years and that same arborist was doing injection fertilizer treatments and they actually have bounced back substantially but maybe not well enough. Okay . Now you have to realize whenever you call someone in to look at plants on your property that's a potential sale of something to them. Oh yes, yes . So canker, which we'll get into in a minute , there's no reason to fertilize and there's no need for fertilizer injections . When did nature ever walk around the forest with a big syringe going here you go this won't hurt . Yeah, no, canker anything over feeding would not cause canker, but it would encourage it . Okay , well, okay. Canker really refers to the symptoms , the split bark, the black blotchy areas that occur , the deformed branches . You know, and is that what you're seeing? So I do have large sections of some of the holly plants that are browned out. Some of the leaves also have black spots on them. That's probably the first symptom that I started to notice over five years ago was the black spots on the leaves. When I was looking at the bark , I couldn't see areas that were I couldn't really differentiate the disease. I didn't really okay areas when you crack when you look at the plants we realize they're not pleasant looking but, is anything deformed their basic structure, their trunk, their branches ? Doesn't seem like it to me. Okay, you don't have a cancker , other than the big parts that are browned out that no I didn't say browned out, deformed. But deformed. No, no, it doesn't look deformed. There's a couple of sections that'll have kind of like it looks like mosque growing on it, but that's about it. Yeah, none of that is canker . Now the mosques leads me to believe that they don't get enough sun . Okay . They're on the side is that's the west side of the house. So it does feel like they do get some sun, but yeah, it's possible that it's not enough. Okay , but you didn't install them. You bought the house and was told that there was a thirty year old planting , but you suspect that they planted them anew right before you locked in . Oh, I actually they didn't give me any information. I kind of just assumed that they were about the age of the house, but I really don't know how old they are. Okay . All right and what's at their base? Are they growing out of grass ? Are there weeds around them ? Are they touching They're growing out of a garden bed . There's really nothing, maybe like some clover growing some weed, but not a significant amount. It's pretty bare underneath. Okay , so they're not surrounded by grass long tall grassy weeds or anything like that. Correct. Correct. Okay . And now is the time . Now in the pictures , it appears that at least one of them had turned completely brown . Yes, yes. How many brownies do we have? We have I believe there were about twenty in the front yard and four are decidedly dead and maybe three other ones are brown and maybe maybe dead, kind of hard to say. Although I would say actually one of the ones that seems I was going to say was fairly dead. I cut back some of the brown sections last year and there is some new growth growing from the base of the Holly's. The good news here , which I learned from the caretaker of a local arboretum many years ago , they go , I'm not going to guess Maybe I'm going to guess. Maybe it was Tyler Arbretum, but they specialized in hollies . And I have a blue holly that was given to me to quote test ago, which is like turning Superman over to Lex Luther for a checkup and it grew awkwardly . It developed a bad shape . There was a side branch that came out that overtook the look of the plant. I was talking with him about it and he said, You are so lucky. Hollies can be cut back almost to the ground and they will regrow . They're very hardy plants and with any luck , yours will regrow straight , but you're also going to pay attention now and prune off any branches going in directions you don't like early on . So you should have been taking out any brown areas as soon as they appeared . Okay . Now any hollies that are completely brown , I would urge you to cut them back , cut off all of the branches, leave as much of the stump as you can . And the other ones prune pretty strongly. Prune them for shape , prune them , prune them to get rid of any brown areas, anything that doesn't look good. Hollies are something that unlike other plants, you can go out and you can get pruning happy. Just don't cut off any healthy parts . Then when you're done take a look at what you've got Maybe you don't want to wait for those four to regrow. Mine grew regrew faster than I thought it would . But if everything is looking good and you should see signs of new sprouts even this year if you do this . By the way, use a bow saw . Use a real garden implement. Don't use a wood cutting saw or you may prove that they're not invulnerable . And in the meantime , you can always fake it. You can get a nice big planter or build a garden box of some kind to hide the bad ones. Nobody's gonna know it'll look like you did it deliberately. You can put out statues of the little boy . But get rid of the bad parts and you know cut down if it looks dead , let's see. Let's get rid of the overgrowth over the top of the stump growth . Give them I'd say another month to show you what's really dead and what isn't. But all this time period , especially where you are with when summer isn't going to come on fast and strong . You got plenty of time to do this . But you don't have canker and you should thank your lucky stars. Yeah, thank you so much. Oh, by the way, I heard you say you're using Holly Tone . Are you using it excessively ? How are you applying it ? Maybe well, honestly, I intend to do it twice a year, but it ends up being once a year and it's around the drip line of the plants. And I apply whatever the directions on the bag say . Okay , what time of year have you chosen to do the feeding ? It's probably I buy the bags in the fall with best intentions or in the spring with best intentions and don't put it in until the fall. Okay, you're hurting the plants . Okay . The plants are trying to go dormant and you're you're slapping them awake worst time to feed a plant is when it's trying to go sleepies . Okay , so get off your couch that nice and get your holy tone . Apply it lightly , do what you're saying, and then do you have access to any compost ? I can I think my town has compost that I can acquire from them. Okay, make sure it smells right, looks right and feels right, you know? Okay . But after you apply your holy tone , put an inch of comp around on top of the holy tone because all granular fertilizers need to be covered with some sort of soil to activate them. But the black spots on the bottoms of your leaves show me that they are picking up a disease and compost around the base of the plant is the world's best disease preventer . Okay , okay. So if I do so pruning for shape , how much of the plant is safe to prune for shape? Well for shape especially you know, everything you have is an intensive care right now . So I'm going to repeat don't cut off anything healthy . Just cut off the bad part s . Feel free to prune away any lower branches that do get spots on them . Okay , but otherwise just the damaged stuff minor pruning for shape because we want to see what the healthy part of the plant looks like when it all leaks leafs out like by June or July , then you'll really see where you stand. Okay, that's good to know. You know, what are them during dry times if you have a drought ? Okay . And then the pruning the disease branch, that includes the ones that have black spots on them. Oh yeah Yeah, anything that doesn't look right and you can be fearless because it's going to regrow . You may just have to do a little subtle garden hiding behind the curtain trick until they look complete again. But I'll tell you just by getting rid of the bad stuff , making sure nothing tall , a weedy is growing around them it's going to make a huge difference . And the more compost you put around that entire area , the better the area will look and it'll prevent disease . One or two inches of compost is a great all purpose feeding , but it also looks and prevents weeds just as well as those lousy wood chip s . So it's it's really that's the medicine we're needing here and don't let the guy with the needle back . Okay, sounds good, sounds good. And then sorry, one last question. So the compost, if I'm not able to get it through my town and I purchase it, is it like a mushroom compost or I guess what do you recommend? Go to archive of our previous answers because we just did that and it should be up near the top . Go to the go to the U Betcher Garden Facebook page . There's a link to the question in the week. Hit that and you'll soon see what kind of soil should I use? What's the difference between composts? I think there's one specifically on mushroom compost and the difference. Great . All right . All right, thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it. All right, well good luck and let us know how it works. Okay, certainly. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. Well, it's time for me to take a little break and deliver some tomato planting advice Bury the stem as deep possible . Put the crushed shells of a dozen eggs on top of the root ball , fill the hole with the soil you remove to make the hole , spread two inches of compost on top , and water deeply and slowly. But don't go running outside just yet because we'll be right back to heal your hydrangeas and take more of your fabulous phone calls. I'm Mike McGrath and you're listening to You Better Garden from the NPR studios of WDIY and in Bethlehem PS Tall and slim arborvitae are the most common streaming plants , but what happens when they show signs of decline? I'm Mike McGraft and on the next drilling episode of You Bet Your Garden. I'll diagnose what's going wrong Your fabulous phone calls and who knows what else? That's on the next You Bet Your Garden Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of WDIY FM and Bethlehem PA , I am your host Mike McGrath and we are in the stretch right now cats and kittens in just a little bit , I'll be offering all kinds of help for your battered hydrangeas . But before that a couple more of your fabulous phone calls at six nine four eight one zero zero extension number three Hi this is Kathyn Central P A and I'm calling to let Mike know he can stand in I told you so line and wave his floral flag because he gave me many garden tips and an on air call last fall and I did a erate plug seed the garden in the fall and we've changed the cutting height of the yard . I bought the standing dandelion tool and I'm chasing out the invaders and the lawn is not perfect, but I'm so much happier than someone who bought those bags of wheat and feed and didn't win any wars previous years . Now also composting those fall leaves with some coffee ground s, eggshells and some leaf lawn clippings . So that's my story and I'll keep on gardening. Capti, I love it . You did everything . The only thing I would suggest you mention that your compost pile is leaves. I hope they're shredded, coffee grounds, which are a great source of nitrogen and grass clippings , which are another great source of nitrogen , but I urge lawn owners to leave those clippings on the lawn . And you won't see get a mulching mower . They just get cut and cut and cut repeatedly until they fall back onto your lawn as n itrogen . Nitrogen is the food for lawns . So rather than mix them into your compost pile , leave those clippings on your lawn. If you don't have a mulching mower get one and you'll never look back . And of course, only mow with a sharp blade . As blades get dull, they rip the blades of grass apart and they can't hold water . And that's when you start to have a lousy looking lawn in the summer. So again, you seem to have done right . Fall the time to core air a lawn that has never had it done to it before . You want to improve the look of a lawn , you rent or hire a machine to pull plugs out of the soil . As that hole naturally fills back in , your lawn can breathe easier and roots need to breathe . It is so . I think you also said you de thatched the lawn , which is a great idea to do in the fall , you get a specialized rake. They even have power rakes that do this . And you just go over the lawn with it and you get all this dead thatch . Now dead thatch is brown. It's not green . So that can go into your compost pile. You won't see me brown in your lawn and it is a perfect natural addition . One caution I would not coer ate and power thatch in the same season . You know , they do a good job, but they know kind of kicked the lawn around while they're doing it. So in the future just go with one . Dandelions , dandelions, they keep us hompin'. Yeah, I'm so glad you got one of the tools that stands up and pops the root right out of the ground. We make sure to get all of the dandelions out of the front of our house, the part you can see from the road , which means that I have a ton of dandelions in my backyard because I know the bees that come out early love pollen and nectar . So I got a wild bee farm out back. I got one that the neighbors can't complain about up front and everybody seems to go home happy. Oh, but I don't let them go to seed . I have a yard and garden torch very simple appliance. You've heard me talk about it all the time. It's a shepherd's hook you attach a camp stove size bottle of propane to the short end , and then there's an electric igniter. There didn't used to be. That's a big improvement . And you click it and a flame comes out the bottom. So you're standing up and all you do is gently approach any puff balls that have set and sl owly get the flame to them because if you do this nice and slow , you'll see all sorts of colors . Honestly , no matter what you've been doing or not doing inside, it's like munchkin fireworks . But thank you for getting back and saying that it works and that people really need to stop being manipulated into buying those big bags at the store . So I wish you a good season, Catherine, thanks for calling . As promised, it is time for the question of the week, which we are calling hard times for hydrangeas . Mary J in Southampton, New Jersey writes, My hydrange as look simply terrible after this past tough winter . Leaf buds are partly brown and stunted . However, there is some new greening at the bottom of each plant . Do I simply cut them all back and forgo any flowers this year? How do I prevent this from happening again Well, I solved this way too frequent problem years ago by just not looking at my hydrangeas anymore . Springtime heat waves followed by bud killing hard freezes seem to have become the norm across much of the country. We had a frigid, almost record twenty four degrees the night of April twentieth following an almost record setting heat wave that kiss the nineties in much of the Mid Atlantic a week before that. Yeah, do the math . A series of days in the high eighties wakes everything up and then somebody opens the freezer door the following week for another almost record setter , but in the opposite direction . And it ain't over . This episode of You Bet Your Garden will first air on may fifteenth and will be preceded by a chilly forty one degrees a few nights before . So I doubt I'll have any tender crops like tomatoes, peppers, and bush beans in the ground by the time you hear this for the first time . Remember frost and freezes are one thing , but you also need to avoid having the plants of summer outside during the twilight zone of the forties . These are tropical plants and freezing temperatures are not the only indicat or that it's still too early to plant them. Crops planted when nights are still in the forties will mature a good two weeks late at best . So wait until nighttime temperatures are reliably in the fifties . Plant in the evening to avoid the tiny little plants being scorched by the sun and success shall be yours unless it snows in June. Okay, back to hydrangeas proper . Certain types only bloom on new wood and they shouldn't be affected by this weather madness as their buds have not yet completely formed . These include the smooth pannakle varieties . Smooth hydrangeas bloom early to mid summer on that new wood and produce large rounded flower heads in white, pink, or green. Panicle hydrangeas feature cone shaped flower clusters that start white and gradually turn pink or red as the season progresses with blooms appearing mid to late summer and contin uing into fall . The most common old wood bloomer is the extremely popular unfortunately , big le af hydrangea , hydrangea macophilia. It produces large round mop head or delicate lace cap blooms that can be pink, blue, purple , or white, depending on the soil's acidity . This is what I got . They were a gift so I had no choice. If I did have a choice and knew what I know now, I would have gone with the panacles , which always looked depressingly great in my neighbor's gardens . There are many other types, so search online photos to try and match what you got or had in previous seasons if you're not sure of your specific cultivar . Old wood bloomers produced their flower buds the previous year and are serious ly at risk of false spring damage , which explains why I'm lucky to get a good show four out of ten seasons . If you know that's what you got and a late frost slash freeze is predicted , what are the hell out of the plants in the days before ? Saturated soil gives them a couple of degrees of wiggle room . Then you got two choices the easiest is to cover the plants with floating row covers . These spun polyester blankets are widely available and come in different strengths , heavy duty for situations like this and lightweight for protecting plants from insect attack during the season . And if you're one of those gardeners refuses to buy , you'll know this by all the quote ugliest use of five gallon bucket awards you've received. Use sheer curtains instead . They'll prevent frost from settling on the plants proper but won't crush them the way tarps would and they allow for essential air circulation the way that black plastic can. No blankets either. Your protection must be light weight and breathable , and it'll work even better if you toss it on top of some support like tomato cages to make sure the frost can't settle on the leaves . Oh , and in all cases like this , have this tattooed on your hand . Just because you have a lot of something doesn't mean you should use it in the garden . Okay, so you're prepared for next year. What do you do now? First, of course, you follow my favorite rule and quote do nothing. You can't reverse existing damage , but sometimes the plants themselves can, if you leave them alone for the next month or so . Then because hydrangea pruning is difficult even in good times , I suggest you continue to do nothing until the other hydrange as in your neighborhood begin blooming , then continue to do nothing . That greenery at the bottom is the sign that, like unprotected fake tre , you can freeze the above ground growth of hydrangeas , but the roots will survive and you could still get some flowers a week or two after any new flower growth stops , prune out any shoots that are in front of the blooms that did appear so the few puny flowers you have are more visible . Then snap off any dried out really most sincerely dead canes . If you have an old wood bloomer, try to leave the poor thing alone and hope for better weather next year. If it is a quote new wood variety , cut just enough canes to show off the flowers , but stop by the middle of July to ensure you have adequate biomass to keep the plants healthy Well, that sure was a lot of hydrangea helping advice. Now one thing. Luckily you can read the details over at your leisure or your leisure by following the link for the Gardens Alive Question of the Week at the top of the You Bet Your Garden Facebook page . Yikes, my producer is threatening to harass my hydrangeas. If I don't get out of this studio , we must be out of time. But you can call us anytime at six , six nine, four one hundred extension number or send us your email you're tired, you're poor. Your wretched refuse teaming tour gardens sure B G at P T D . net . That's our new email address going forward. And if you happen to live anywhere, please tell us where it is . And visit our Facebook page where we post new photos of our gardens and invite you to send us photos of your precious plants , share your thoughts about the show , receive important and informative updates about our upcoming move to another venue , a link to the written version of the Gard ens Alive Question of the Week , and links to our podcast . It's all at the U Bet Your Garden Facebook page . You bet your Garden is a public radio show and podcast, produced and delivered to you every week from the studios of NPR Station W DIY and Bethlehem PA You bet your garden was created by Mike McGrath. Mike McGrath was created when a weird glowing rock fell through his ceiling while he was watching peticot junction. Our musical director is Ken Quater, our social media director is Amanda North . Our peerless prince of profound production is James Zipper . Margaret McConnell is the executive director of WDIY FM . Our executive producer is the always lovely Jonas Boe , and our incredible assistant the awesome Ninja Shawn . I'm your host Mike McGrath and my fabulous farmer friends , Georgia Melanie DeVault just presented me with twenty four beautiful baby pepper plants and too many tomatoes to count , so I'll be outside digging in the dirt until I can see you again week