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M.Clark
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Posts: 42
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:30 pm
Location: Grand Rapids, MI

Speed up the growth of lilacs and sacrifice the flowers for

Last year I was able to get about a dozen 1’ to 4’ common purple lilac shoots from my parent’s and planted them along the property line. Because of the removal of an evil black walnut tree, I had to temporarily dig them up and mulch them. Now that I am about to plant them back along that property line, I want to make sure that they get the best conditions for growth that I can offer. I am not worried about getting any flowers for a few years, but I would like to have a good size hedge (5 to 6 feet) in the next few years. After that, I want to worry about flowers.

I was reading on different methods of fertilizing and a common theme was that a high nitrogen based fertilizer will boost growth but prevent flowering. Being that I want to try to keep things organic as possible, I found out that the spent beer grain that has been going into my compost bin would might be a perfect way of boosting the nitrogen levels to get those plants to rocket towards the sky.

Has anyone else used a high nitrogen fertilizer to get a flowering plants to boost in height for a few years before attempting to get flowers?

luis_pr
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Posts: 824
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2009 8:31 am
Location: Hurst, TX USA Zone 7b/8a

Yes. I used blood meal. But fast growing trees.... Hmmmm, I keep getting so many reminders of just how bad those trees do around here that I now control the urge to make things grow fast.

Bradford Pear Trees are ubiquitous, all over here. They look nice when they flower in Spring and look great when the leaves turn purple or reddish in the Fall. They also naturally grow fast. When they reach 10-15 years of age, watch out if there is wind, snow or ice.

My next door neighbor just got rid of her tree two weeks ago. A second big branch fell and she gave up. Another big branch had fallen two years ago. This past weekend, we had some windy storms and I saw big branches down in another neighbor's bp tree. The ones close to me probably were planted at about similar times 10+ nyears ago, which is why I am noticing so many branches down on stormy days. Sigh. They do look nice at other times.

Since lilacs already grow at a medium to fast rate, I would not try to tweak their growth any more. Two feet a year is common:

https://www.cdr3.com/lilacs/



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