Question
I have 3 new hydrangeas that were planted this past October. At that time they were just 'stick plants'.  They are very healthy and have grown quit nice, but I only have one flower on one plant. I have put some MiracleGrow on them twice.  They were planted by a professional. I live in Michigan. Thank you for your help.
Tonya

Answer
Tonya my friend, Rome was not built in a day.

Those are BABY Hydrangeas growing in your garden.  Give them time, dear.  They will grow up - bigger every year.

Easy on the Miracle Gro.  Best thing to do for those Hydrangeas is give them good, healthy soil.  Miracle Gro is not good for your plants.

Huh?

Yep, that's what I said.  Miracle Gro is not good for your plants.

You know how every once in a while you'll hear someone rant about how Organic Fertilizer is better than Chemical Fertilizer?  And you probably shrug and move on.  We've all seen those Miracle Gro ads with the tomatoes the size of watermelons.  'Before' is the side of a small bee.  'After' is a family-size blue-ribbon fruit that will feed a family of 4.  Seeing is believing.  A picture is worth a thousand words.

Ah, the power of advertising.

The only way a tomato is going to get that big is if it has genes to do that.  Most tomatoes don't have those genes.  Anyway, who cares?  Do you really NEED a tomato that big?  Tomatoes so large they need their own living room?  No way.  We grow tomatoes for sauce, or salad, or to make sauce.  Flavor is what counts.  There are DNA-frying chemicals that are sold in the horticulture industry that WILL alter the genetic destiny of a tomato, stretching the cells, creating monster sized tomatoes.  But you would not want to eat one of them.  They use those for growing Geraniums and florist plants and for research.

If you take a freak tomato (with natural monster-sized tomato genes) and you put Miracle Gro on it, it WILL get that big.  It needs extra fertilizer -- healthy soil won't be able to feed that hungry plant fast enough.

But if you have healthy soil, you have microbes.  That's the microscopic life in the soil -- there's a whole Food Chain down there, a balance.

Here's a secret:  ALL 'Chemical Fertilizer' IS SALT!

And THIS is why they warn you not to over-do the fertilizer.

Too much, and you burn the roots.  But put ANY AT ALL down and you wipe out a lot of those microbes.  The microbes are FOOD FACTORIES for your Hydrangea.  Miracle Gro wipes out the microbes.  And there goes your food factories.

What you REALLY want is a pH that will give you FLOWERS and the COLOR you want on those flowers.  If you want Blue (the popular favorite in Hydrangeas), you want the soil to be acidic.  Slightly Acidic won't work.  It has to be seriously low.  And you have to get started.  If those flowers are blue now, wait til you see what they look like in Acid soil.

Miracid by the way is not your Chemical of Choice.  It's packed with Nitrogen for foliage and foundation plants.  It encourages lots of leaves.  You are looking for flowers.

Cut the Miracle Gro and mulch your Hydrangea with compost, dead leaves, brown grass, bark mulch.  You are on the right track.  Those healthy Hydrangeas will look better every year.

Thanks for writing.  Any questions, of course, I'm here.