If you want to help your Endless Summer hydrangea to achieve better blooms and overall increased vitality, one thing you can do is deadheading.

How to deadhead endless summer hydrangeas

The Endless Summer hydrangea is very similar to other bigleaf hydrangeas as it needs consistently moist soil, partial shade, and while it is classified as an endless bloomer, with flowers between early summer and fall, it will respond quite well to deadheading. Deadheading is a process of removing the dead blooms once they have reached their peak so that energy in the plant can be redirected to new growth or new flowers.

The benefits of deadheading your Endless Summer hydrangea

Endless Summer Hydrangeas benefit from deadheading because it reduces any dead flowers and dead branches leaving limited energy for other parts of the plant. Hydrangeas only have so much energy. It can only be spread so far and if it is still diverting energy to the dying blooms then too seed, that takes away energy from new blooms.

Understand that deadheading is an occasional removal of dead flowers and you can also prune away diseased or dead wood. Drastic measures are very rarely recommended especially if you have a younger plant that is still establishing itself.

When to deadhead your Endless Summer hydrangea

Endless Summer hydrangeas are unique as they bloom on old and new wood so there is no rule of thumb specific to when you should prune or deadhead. If you are simply deadheading, only removing the old blooms, that’s something you can do early in the summer or later in the fall.

Effectively you want to cut away the old blooms as soon as they have reached their maturation and are starting to die off. When you do it you need to be careful that you look underneath the bloom and underneath the leaves on the branch. The reason for this is that you want to avoid cutting any of the new growth that might be underneath. If you do it in the summer, you can carefully remove dead blooms and if you do it immediately below the bloom, you won’t cause any harm to the new growth. If it is already falling or early winter and the new healthy buds are growing, you might want to simply leave the dead flowers where they are to protect those new buds against any winter frost or wind. Dead flowers will all fall off on their own at some point or another.

If you want you can cut 10 or 12 in stems with the blooms as they reach maturation from your Endless Summer hydrangea to use as flower arrangements. If you do this in the middle of summer, try to do it right before the flowers reach maturation so that you can enjoy them much longer as they sit in your home.

Image by MADSkills from Pixabay