Liliacs need lots of sun, but just a little food

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, June 30, 2007

Bunkey is feeling pretty smug. His cousin was ready to grub his lilacs out because they had quit blooming and for a change, Bunkey knew the answer to a gardening question.

Of course, he only knew because he had heard his neighbor, George, explaining lilac growing to a friend the week before. Bunkey had looked at the lilacs and noticed that a maple tree was shading his cousin's lilac. Lilacs need at least a half-day of sun to bloom.

More, of course is better. The maple tree was shading the lilac for most of the day. There are three other things that will keep a lilac from blooming. One is planting the shrub in a wet area or a low spot that gets wet every time it rains. They need water but a red-twiged dogwood would do much better in that spot.

Another no-no is too much food. If lilacs were horses they would be called "easy keepers." Usually there is enough fertilizer in a nearby fertilized lawn to feed lilacs. Too much nitrogen is especially bad as it encourages leafy vegetative growth at the expense of the flowers. This is a shrub that doesn't need to be fed.

The third problem of non-flowering spring blooming shrubs, including lilacs, is pruning at the wrong time. If you need to prune a lilac, do it immediately after blooming as the shrub starts setting buds for next year shortly after blooming.

If you do need to prune the snot out of the plant — it is too wide or too tall — don't expect blooms for three or four years. You can cut a lilac down to a foot tall to improve the shape of the shrub and to bring the blooms down to a better height.

A lilac that is 15-feet tall may have blooms only on its top. Not an attractive sight. Whack it down. If you are a Martha-type, you can cut off the brown seed clusters. They aren't especially attractive.

If you are tired of the plain old regular lilac, check with your local nurseries for some of the new cultivars. Three full-size lilacs are Mt. Baker, Sensation and Primrose. There are also dwarf lilacs. Miss Kim and the Korean lilacs.

If you havn't mulched your vegetable garden, best get started to keep ahead of the weeds.

And, since we are about two weeks ahead of normal, thin your apples this week. They should be thinned to one to two per clump. This does two things: It prevents your tree’s branches from breaking off with an overload of apples, and it encourages the tree to produce every year, not every other year.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for West Otter Tail County.