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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Help! It’s 3/31. Too late to prune the hydrangeas? These are the regular blue/pink fluffballs that most people have. [/quote]

Bigleaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla). Blooms are large, round clusters (mophead) or flat-topped with outer petals surrounding a central cluster (lacecap) in colors of from pink to blue to purple depending on soil acidity, wiht large, oval-shaped green leaves. These bloom on old wood, so pruning at the wrong time can affect flowering.

Here is the U. MD Extension’s advice on pruning hydrangea. https://extension.umd.edu/resource/pruning-hydrangeas/

Summary:
You can thin your bigleaf mophead shrub now, which is removing select, entire branches to get more air flow into the plant and avoid black spot, etc. since you remove the whole branch anyway, bloom time doesn’t matter.

Heading back: as your hydrangea breaks dormancy, you can see where branches of parts of branches have died. You can cut any branch back to the top-most set of live buds without harming flowering. Often winter will cause dead tips, so pruning those out can happen any time, as a dead tip won't bloom anyway.

Deadheading. While not necessary, you can remove dried up flowers at the tips of branches (not further down the branch) any time after flowers fade for any hydrangea type.

What you don’t want to do right now is renewal pruning where you remove or cut back most of the old wood — that will cut off this year’s blooms. Unless, of course, you need to do a full renewal pruning because the shrub is struggling or has taken on an awkward shape.[/quote]

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