Q.Hydrangeas
We We have two healthy hydrangea plants next to each other. One has a lot of blooms, the other has none. Why?
Needed more detailed information including the exact varietal names for both specimens but here are some general comments. The bloomless shrub may have been injured by the December 22nd 2022 arctic blast that resulted in reduced/no hydrangea blooms as far south as Texas and Georgia when your temperatures crashed to -6°F and possibly killed the stems. If this shrub were to be a remontant variety (i.e., “rebloomer”), it would still lose last year's stems and fail to produce a spring flush of blooms but it should produce its typical second flush of blooms in late summer/fall 2023. However, some remontant cultivars produce a second flush much earlier than other remontant cultivars that do so in late summer. Of course, cultivars that are not remontant and only bloom once in spring, they developed dormant spring 2023 flower buds from July-September 2022, the severe December 2022 winter conditions killed the stems and so these once bloomers will skip blooming in 2023. But they will develop dormant spring 2024 flower buds in July-September 2023 and resume blooming in spring 2024 if winter cooperates. Other general causes: leafless live stems were pruned prematurely (consider waiting until the end of June in the northern half of the US as that is around the latest they can leaf out); early/late frost stem injury; fertilizing late (the last fertilizer application should be 3 months before your average date of first frost (or around 3 months before the 3rd-4th weeks of October); fertilizing with high nitrogen fertilizers or lawn fertilizer; florist hydrangea that is not sufficiently winter hardy and should be either winter protected if grown outside or grown in containers (but brought into a garage/basement before freezing temperatures arrive around the end of October through the end of April for Bel Air); pests like deer, rabbits, squirrels ate the flower buds.
