A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 lilacs

Last year my lilac bushes were somewhat full of flowers and very leafy. This year I have branches with no leaves just kinda like buds at the end of the branches. I got three 3! sets of flowers! The bushes look very straggley. I checked the page about lilacs, but this year should I prune all of them down? Cut off those straggley without any leaves off? They look terrible! We did have a somewhat mild winter here this year. Less than a month of snow but it did get cold. Help!

If you cut all of them down, it will take probably take several years for them to recover enough to bloom again. So, I wouldn't unless I thought the branches were dead. That may be the case though, I've seen a lot of different shrubs and trees with dieback this year and many that are totally dead. I think it was from the incredibly wet summer we had last year. Some sort of fungal problem?

I've noticed that same sort of problem with mine, Moondance. Since you live in the same area as I do, i'm guessing that they might be stressed from the very bad drought two years ago. I wonder if a kind of fertilizer might help them get bushy again. let's see what the webmaster says.

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/Syringa.htm has some good tips about growing lilacs. Since mine are in full sunshine and i do take off spent blooms, perhaps some lime worked into the soil would help to refresh them.

I had the same problem and found out lilacs don't like too much water. Mine was in a location where water collected and I modified the way water drained. This spring I added phosphorus, I think from a suggestion on this site. I bought it at Lowes and had more blooms than ever this year.

I had not had a chance to go to the back of the house where my lilac is until today and boy what a shock I received when I saw that my lilac had only a few flowers and almost no leaves. I don't know what happend to mine. My neighbor's lilac is in his front yard and looks very good with lots of blooms and leaves. I will try to add some phosphorous like someone else said and hope that next year it will be in better shape. <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" />