Grow Your Own Magazine

Bought a beautiful blue, lacy hydrangea last year,which flowered all last summer, over wintered Ok, and now has begun to flower again, only pink! Anyone know of anythingI can water it with, or add to soil to make it revert to its lovely blue colour?

Have seen stuff in my local garden centre for turning them blue, sorry can't remember what it is called though.

Good luck

__________________
Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

The colour of hydrangeas is dependent on the acidity / alkalinity of your soil - you might wanna check but I think I'm right in saying pink is acidic soils and blue is alkaline soils, so to change the clour, change the acidity of the soil it's growing in.

__________________
Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday November 13th

It's the other way round Rat, blue-acidic, pink-alkali. You can buy special Hydrangea colour food from garden centres Julie & if your soil is fairly neutral it should change the colour back to blue but if your soil is very alkaline they will stay pink or a murky lilac. You could try potting it up in a large pot/tub of ericaceous compost if the plant is not too big & you really want it to be blue but the pink is very pretty anyway so why not just enjoy that.

__________________
Into every life a little rain must fall.

Julie, you could also try using an ericaceous fertiliser. It will raise the acidity of the soil, and should turn the flowers blue again.