Amazing with the luxury of long flowering hydrangea Magical Moonlight is a typical representative of panicled species. She is unpretentious and amazing. This fast-growing deciduous shrub with strong straight shoots has significant advantages: high decorative effect and amazing ability to regenerate stems damaged by freezing. This magnificent garden plant, agricultural techniques and care will be discussed in this publication.
Hydrangea Magical Moonlight: description
Like many representatives of the paniculata, Magical Moonlight is an upright bush that grows up to 2 meters in quality content. Strong, fast-growing shoots covered with brown exfoliating bark, generously leafy and crowned with luxurious inflorescences, grow a spreading crown with a diameter of up to one and a half meters. Hydrangea Magical Moonlight blooms on the shoots of the current year. Flowering, generous and long, begins in July and pleases gardeners untilmid-September.
The flowers are collected in magnificent dense inflorescences in the form of a wide cone, the width of the base of which reaches very impressive sizes (25-27 cm), and the height varies from 20 to 28 cm. There are two types of flowers in the inflorescences: sterile - larger, giving sophistication to the plant, and fertile - small, subsequently forming seeds. The color of the flowers is remarkable: when blooming, they become greenish-white, with time they acquire pinkish hues, and closer to autumn they turn into deep crimson tones.
Blossoming shoots are excellent cut flowers, and properly dried inflorescences are often used in interior decoration and popular winter bouquets. But not only the inflorescences are decorative in this plant, they emphasize the elegant beauty of the culture and dense rough leaves of deep dark green color, oblong with a pronounced apex and a finely serrated edge.
Peculiarities of culture
Due to unpretentiousness and high decorative effect, Magical Moonlight hydrangea is used in landscaping, garden and park interiors. It is very effective both in compositions and ensembles, and in single plantings, arrays, hedges. Despite the fact that the culture is undemanding, there are some points in agricultural technology, ensuring the implementation of which, gardeners achieve a luxurious and long flowering that creates a festive entourage to any natural landscape.
The hardiness of the plant is not inferior to itdecorative: Magical Moonlight hydrangea successfully survives frosts up to 26-29 ° C, which often accompany winters in temperate Russian latitudes.
Plant preferences and soil preparation for planting
Magical Moonlight prefers sunny or slightly shaded loamy areas with slightly acidic air and water permeable fertile soils. An important factor determining the degree of comfort for hydrangeas is moderate regular soil moisture and the prevention of an excess of calcium in it. Before planting, the site is prepared by digging and introducing well-rotted compost, and red peat is added for acidification (if necessary). With a pronounced clay structure of the soil, a little coarse river sand is poured during digging.
Hydrangea paniculata Magical Moonlight: planting and care
In the northern and temperate latitudes, it is preferable to plant hydrangeas in spring, in areas with mild winters. It is better to purchase well-developed 3-5-year-old seedlings: these young plants will take root more successfully and bloom faster. Before planting, the soil is fertilized: 10 kg of humus, 100 g of superphosphate, 60 g of potassium sulfate are added per square meter. A planting hole is dug out in proportion to the volume of the root system of the seedling, on average its width is 0.4-0.6 m, and the depth is 03-0.4 m. The intervals between the bushes are kept within 2-2.5 m, and when a live hedges - 0, 7-1 m.
Seedlings are inspected before planting, dried and broken are removed, shortened a little. During spring plantingsplants shorten annual stems, leaving 3-4 pairs of growth buds on each.
Caring for plantings: watering and fertilizing
Generous watering required after planting. During the subsequent time, while the plant takes root, it needs regular watering. And in the future, the extremely moisture-loving panicled hydrangea Magical Moonlight will require attention from the gardener precisely in terms of moisture: a lack of water will immediately affect the decorative effect.
Culture responds well to mulching. Plantings of young plants are mulched with needles, chopped tree bark, peat or compost, which maintains an optimal microclimate and moisture in the near-stem space. The layer of mulch should be 7-8 cm. This technique significantly reduces the labor costs of the gardener: you do not have to weed and loosen the soil.
Hydrangeas need feeding:
- In autumn, a complex mineral fertilizer with a high content of phosphorus and potassium.
- Spring solution of 20 g of urea per 10 liters of water. One bucket of solution is enough for a young plant, 2-3 for an adult.
- During the growing season, infusion of rotted manure (10 liters per bush).
Cutting
The formation of the crown is necessary to maintain the decorativeness of flowering shrubs, which include the hydrangea Magical Moonlight. Reviews of gardeners about annual pruning are unambiguous: they significantly increase the beauty of the plant, stimulate the formation of flower buds. The number of inflorescences and their size depend on the forming procedures:the more radical the cut, the larger and more effective they are.
Pruning is carried out in two stages: in the fall, all inflorescences are removed, making the bush lighter, and in the spring, before the start of sap flow, it is necessary to thin out the adult culture, cutting out all weak, frozen or growing branches inside the crown. One-year-old shoots are shortened so that 3-5 pairs of growth buds remain on them. Such pruning is important not only to enhance the decorative qualities of hydrangeas. It will help to avoid thickening of the bush and prevent the occurrence of diseases of various origins.
