Amazing hydrangea of long flowering hydrangea Magic Moonlight is a typical representative of panicled species. She is unpretentious and delightful. This fast-growing deciduous shrub with strong straight shoots has significant advantages: high decorativeness and amazing ability to regenerate stems damaged by freezing. This magnificent garden plant, agricultural techniques and care for it will be discussed in this publication.
Hydrangea Magic Moonlight: Description
Like many panicled representatives, the Magic Moonlight is an erect bush growing with a quality content of up to 2 meters. Strong, fast-growing shoots, covered with brown exfoliating bark, generously leafy and crowned with luxurious inflorescences, build up a sprawling crown up to a meter and a half in diameter. Hydrangea Magic Moonlight blooms on the shoots of this year. Flowering, generous and long, begins in July and delights gardeners until mid-September.
The flowers are collected in magnificent dense inflorescences in the form of a wide cone, the width of the base of which reaches a very impressive size (25-27 cm), and the height varies from 20 to 28 cm. There are two types of flowers in the inflorescences: sterile - larger ones that add sophistication to the plant, and fertile - small, subsequently forming seeds. The color of the flowers is wonderful: when blossoming, they become greenish-white, with time they acquire pinkish shades, and closer to autumn they turn into deep raspberry tones.
Flowering shoots are excellent in cut, and properly dried inflorescences are often used in decorating interiors 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 a deep dark green color, oblong with a pronounced top and a fine-toothed edge.
Culture features
Due to its unpretentiousness and high decorativeness, Hydrangea Magic Moonlight is used in landscaping, garden and park interiors. It is very effective both in compositions and ensembles, and in single landings, massifs, hedges. Despite the fact that the culture is undemanding, there are some points in agricultural technology, ensuring the implementation of which, gardeners achieve luxurious and long flowering, creating a festive surroundings of any natural landscape.
The endurance of the plant is not inferior to its decorative effect: Hydrangea Magic Moonlight successfully survives frosts up to 26-29 ° C, which often accompanies winters in temperate Russian latitudes.
Plant preferences and soil preparation for planting
The Magic 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 hydrangea is moderate regular soil moisture and preventing an excess of calcium in it. Before planting, the site is prepared by digging and making well-rotted compost, and red acid peat is added for acidification (if necessary). With a pronounced clay structure of the soil during digging, a little coarse river sand is poured.
Panicle Hydrangea Magic Moonlight: planting and care
In northern and temperate latitudes, hydrangea is preferable to be planted in spring, in areas with mild winters. Acquire better well-developed 3-5-year-old seedlings: these young plants root more successfully and bloom faster. The soil is fertilized before planting: 10 kg of humus, 100 g of superphosphate, 60 g of potassium sulfate are applied per square meter. A planting hole is dug proportionate 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 the device is live hedges - 0.7-1 m.
Before planting, seedlings are inspected, removed dried and broken, shortened a little. During spring plantings, annual stems are shortened in plants, leaving 3-4 pairs of growth buds on each.
Planting care: watering and top dressing
After planting, generous watering is required. Over the next time, while the plant takes root, it needs regular watering. And in the future, the extremely hygrophilous panicle hydrangea Magic Moonlight will require attention from the gardener precisely in terms of hydration: the lack of water will immediately affect the decorative effect.
The culture responds well to mulching. Plantings of young plants are mulched with needles, chopped tree bark, peat or compost, preserving the optimal microclimate and moisture in the near-barrel space. The mulch layer should be 7-8 cm. This technique significantly reduces the gardener's labor costs: you do not have to weed and loosen the soil.
Hydrangeas need top dressing:
- In autumn, a complex mineral fertilizer with a high content of phosphorus and potassium.
- In the spring, a solution of 20 g of urea per 10 liters of water. One bucket of solution is enough for a young plant, for an adult - 2-3.
- During the growing season, the infusion of rotted manure (10 liters per bush).
Pruning
The formation of the crown is necessary to maintain the decorativeness of flowering shrubs, which include Hydrangea Magic Moonlight. Reviews of gardeners about the annual pruning are unambiguous: they significantly increase the beauty of the plant, stimulate the formation of flowering buds. The number of inflorescences and their size depend on the forming procedures: the more radical the pruning, the larger and more spectacular.
Pruning is carried out in two stages: in the fall, all inflorescences are removed, making the bush easier, and in the spring, before the sap flow begins, it is necessary to thin out the adult culture, cutting all weak, frozen or growing branches in the crown into a ring. 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 hydrangea. It will help avoid bush thickening and prevent the occurrence of diseases of various origins.