Lilac bloom question

[cdellinger]

Any suggestions on how to get a lilac to bloom profusely? The lilac bush in question is quite old; it belonged to an old mountain cabin that my wife and I bought and was quite overgrown when we found it. The first year after clearing around it, it produced a large amount of flowers the following spring. However in the two years since that time, the spring flowering has been very sparse, while nearby yards with lilacs have had very good flowering. Should I be fertilizing a lilac? Does it need to be cut back? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[rainbowgardener]

An old lilac will benefit from being cut back. Cut out any dead or damaged stems, and then cut a third of the living ones down to the ground. Do the same thing for a couple more years, taking out the older stems each time. Be sure you do your pruning right after it's finished blooming. Lilacs bloom next year on this year's wood. In the summer and fall they start making the buds for next year's flowers. So if you prune after that, you are removing the buds for the next year's bloom. Also, you always want to dead head your lilac. Remove all the spent flowers as soon as it is finished blooming, before they go to seed. If you let it go to seed, it will flower very weakly the next year. It's an evolutionary adaptation... by not making very many seeds next year, it gives this year's seedlings a chance to get established before they have more competition. Shouldn't need fertilization, though I suppose if it's struggling, it might not hurt. If you were going to try fertilizing, I'd get the slow release tree spikes and dig them well down into the ground, at least a foot. You don't want to encourage your tree to grow surface roots.