My mother in law has an old hydrangea. she has discovered 2 new seperate plants. She originally planted 1 shrub years ago. It is now 2 large shrubs with 2 small plants that have sprouted up beside it. The small sprouts one is 2ft tall with 3-4 branches about 2ft tall and the other is only 1ft tall with 2 branches. She has offered me the small sprouts but I wanted to make sure they can be dug up and moved. When is the best time to do it? It appears to be like a Nikko Blue Hydrangea. In the early summer it blooms baby blue as the summer passes the blooms turn dark blue then a sage green at the end of summer.
I'm not knowledgeable about hydrangeas, but I'll offer two possibilities for what they are worth: 1. Last spring a neighbour trudged across the road with quite a big hydrangea as a gift for my friend. I watched in horror as she planted it, breaking most every rule I could think of. She just put it in the ground—and I seem to recall she did not even give it a trickle-watering from the garden hose. The results, for her: a beautiful hydrangea, as nice as can be; healthy and happy. —Even so, I believe the most important aspect in transplanting is to realize your plant gets its nutrition not through the roots per se, but rather through teensy-tiny hair-like extensions that assimilate nutrients at a cellular level. These "root-hairs" bring the nutrients in to very fine rootlets which supply the roots themselves. —Therefore, you generally want to tamp down the earth very firmly right at the base of the stem, as soon as you have planted; and then you want to leave your garden hose, with its nozzle detached, trickling out a little bit of water right at the base of the stem for several hours. Both the tamping-down and the trickle of water make things easier for those teensy root-hairs to find themselves up close to available soil nutrients. If you don't do the firm tamping-down and the trickle-supply of water, the root-hairs may find themselves inside little air-pockets under the soil, and the plant will go into much greater shock. That is the theory, and I abide by it. However, my friend ignored all that, and, in this instance at least, her hydrangea did well right from the beginning. 2. I found you this: http://www.ehow.com/how_5816098_move-hydrangea-plants.html
