01 September 2023 , 18:48
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If you've got hydrangeas growing in your garden, you'll know that their big blooms can be beautiful to look at no matter what colour they happen to be. However, you might also find that even though you expected the flowers to be a vibrant shade of blue, they actually end up more of a pink colour when you plant them.
The colour of a hydrangea flower depends on the chemical makeup of the soil it is planted in, and one woman was recently left confused when she bought a plant that was labelled "Fabolo Blue", only to find that when the flowers bloomed, they were more of a dark pink shade. She took to a gardening Facebook group to ask for assistance with changing the colour of her flowers, and the gurus were all too happy to help - citing a 38p kitchen scrap as a potential saviour.
In a post on the Gardening UK group, the woman asked: "What's going on here then? I bought this Hydrangea Royalty Fabolo Blue from my local garden centre for a fiver last autumn. They'd stuck it in the reduced section with a 'looking for a new home' label on it. It was pruned back hard, but I planted it straightaway and it's survived the winter, thrived and looks very healthy. I planted it in a pot because our soil is alkaline and I wanted blue flowers. However, the flowers look to be dark pink instead of blue.
"I've done everything right, so why is this? It's in a pot with ericaceous compost. I only give it rainwater. I've been giving it hydrangea feed weekly since the spring. It's in a sheltered morning sun, afternoon shade position. Thank you for any tips that I may have overlooked."
Hydrangeas will turn pink if the soil it is planted in has a high pH level, so if you want blue blooms, you'll need to lower the pH value of your soil and make it more acidic. And according to commenters in the Facebook group, this can be done with something many of us use every day and simply chuck away when we're finished with them - tea bags.
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The best part? You want used tea bags for the trick to work, meaning you can make yourself a cuppa as normal, and simply chuck the bag in your garden instead of in the bin. One commenter said: "I've heard putting tea bags around the base helps if you want to turn pink hydrangeas blue."
While another added: "I have two big pink ones in pots, 15 years old. I turn them a gorgeous shade of blue every year by putting used tea bags in the soil around them," and a third wrote: "Put used broken tea bags around the roots, it will turn a stunning blue colour in no time. Mine turned blue, but preferred the pink so took the tea bags away the blooms went back to pink eventually."
Most of us will have tea bags in the house already, but if you need to stock up, Asda sells a pack of 40 tea bags for just 38p from their Just Essentials range, making each bag less than a penny. The cheapest tea bags available on Tesco's website is the 40-pack from Yorkshire Tea, priced at £1.50, while Sainsbury's sells a 40-pack for 70p, and at Morrisons, you can get yourself a whopping 80 tea bags for just 79p.
If you don't feel like chucking tea bags in your garden though, other commenters in the group suggested using slightly rusted iron nails. Someone said: "Bury old rusty iron debris near the roots, it turns the blooms blue," as someone else added: "My mum used to put rusty nails in water and leave them for a couple of weeks and then put the brown water in the watering can. Stayed blue all the time."
However, one knowledgeable gardener pointed out that not all hydrangeas have colour-changing blooms, and it depends on the variety you have. The main types of hydrangeas that can have their colour changed are hydrangea macrophylla or hydrangea serrata.