A question for gardeners: is it necessary to cut a hydrangea for the winter

Most popular hydrangeas do not need special shelter during the cold season. But the beginning gardeners are worried about another important question: is it necessary to cut the hydrangea for the winter or can you leave the bush the way it is? Unfortunately, you can not avoid the process of forming this plant with scissors, but it is possible to simplify it as much as possible.

Shelter and pruning of hydrangeas

Protect from winter frosts usually only have a large leafy appearance of this beautiful plant. However, the first two years of life of the bush in a new place will have to cover the roots with a simple hilling and pouring a layer of fallen leaves. A rare species - hydrangea Sargenta - requires additional wrapping of the entire trunk and branches with kraft paper. You can use cardboard boxes from home appliances, if you do not want to bother with traditional packaging. How to properly cut a hydrangea? It depends on the season and the type of bush that grows on the site.

If the gardener is a proud owner of a paniculate or tree-like species, the removal of the inflorescences formed on old shoots will be mandatory. Is it necessary to cut the hydrangea for the winter in this case? Of course yes. Without removing excess shoots, the bushes become very dense, the flowers become shallow and faded, and the plant itself begins to slowly turn into ugly thickets. Spring pruning is usually designed to strengthen future shoots and significantly increase summer and autumn flowering.

The main requirement for such procedures - the plant must be in time to recover before the appearance of buds or until the first frost. In spring, excess shoots are removed at the end of March or early April. But is it necessary to cut the hydrangea for the winter, if at the beginning of the year there was already one such procedure? Most gardeners believe that it is necessary.

Autumn pruning is necessary for the normal formation of the main stems of the plant, it allows you to create a unique shape of the bush and solve the problem with most molds and rot. Such ailments can arise due to stagnation of air and excessive moisture in the densely growing crown. Plus, because of the small amount of light, the flowers and leaves will be pale.

How to properly cut the hydrangea in the fall for the first time

In the first year of life at the end of the season, you can not remove unnecessary shoots, but this only means that you have to work hard in the spring. The soil will need to be wrapped up with high-quality compost, and the branches should be cut to a distance of one-third of their length. In autumn it is possible to remove shoots, which are located on stubby shoot-stem. Thus the trunk of the future beauty is formed: every year it is necessary to thin such shoots, and the plant will be as much as a tree, and not on a bush. Autumn work is also associated with the removal of all faded inflorescences, otherwise the emerging seeds will extend all the nutritional elements.

Is it necessary to cut a hydrangea for the winter for a rapid flowering in the new year? Most gardeners believe that this is a myth - the removal of shoots at the end of the year only stimulates the growth of the root system and forms a general view of the bush, but does not affect the number of buds in the new year.