Why do lilacs not bloom

This results in the loss of blooms for that year. There is not much that you can do to prevent this; just accept the loss and appreciate next year's blossoms twice as much. As with most plants, where you have planted your lilac bush very much matters. Lilacs are full-sun plants that want well-drained soil. If you made a mistake on either of these fronts when you first installed your plants, you may be paying for it now—in the form of your lilac not flowering.

But there is an easy remedy to the problem: transplant your shrub to a more suitable spot. Regarding reason number four, be aware that, while these bushes are long-lived, their flower production does tend to peter out over the decades. The solution to this problem is to perform a rejuvenation pruning on your lilacs do not expect immediate results, though.

The opposite is also true sometimes: namely, that your plant is simply too young to bloom. Give it time. But while you are waiting, is there anything that you can do to speed up their blossoming? The general advice for getting plants to bloom is to apply phosphorus the middle number in the NPK sequence found on fertilizer bags to the soil. Many of the best performing lilacs around me are in gardens of homes that are not lived in and they get no supplemental watering all summer.

If your lilac is failing to bloom check to see that it does not get too much water. Pot it up into a larger container using a good potting soil not one with added fertilizer and give the roots some room and you should be rewarded with blooms the following Spring. But in other areas Lilacs not blooming can be because of borers and or scale. If it is pests, normally the entire plant will look to be suffering.

Your non blooming lilac may need a good rejuvenating prune to eliminate the borers and scale. Scale can be also treated with Neem oil while the plant is dormant. Be judicious with Neem oil, it is an organic solution but still is broad spectrum. Meaning it kills good bugs too. To bloom well Lilacs need a certain number of days of cold. There are some varieties now available that do well in warmer climes. I list them in this post. Take a broom stick, rubber hose or something similar some feel a rolled-up newspaper is enough and whip the trunk of the lilac in early spring.

I was taught this by a nurseryman I found one day beating plants with a short piece of rubber hose at his nursery. This works not only on lilacs but on fruit trees as well. I hasten to add there is no science to support this. However, when plants have mechanical stress, this can cause them to produce ethylene gas which may affect the blooms.

So as a last resort to get your failing to bloom lilac to perform, give it a good beating and see what happens. If done right it does no harm to the plant or the environment, so why not. Want this information in a printable list? Fill out this form and gain access to the Resource Library of printable information.

I have what i believe is a lilac bush, it has buds but never blooms. I have photos. The buds are dark purple almost black. I have questioned if it is a lilac because of the fact i don't see flowers and the leaves underneath are sticky. Do you have a smart phone? Use a plant app to identify it. I have found them most useful. I use the free version of Plant Snap. Call your local Extension office for a soil test kit and they will mail one to you.

The kit will contain instructions for gathering a soil sample and a self-addressed envelope for you to use to mail your sample to the soil testing laboratory. The laboratory will test the soil and send you a report. The report will tell you about the nutrients and micro-nutrients that are in your soil or missing from your soil as well as instructions on the amendments you need to correct any deficiencies. If the test indicates too much nitrogen, an easy way to rebalance the nutrients in your soil is through the use of mulch.

Wood chips or sawdust are excellent ways to soak up excess nitrogen from your soil. Pruning can be a reason why a lilac doesn't bloom if it is done incorrectly. Lilacs are considered shrubs or small multi-stemmed trees. There are two types of shrubs, ones that bloom on "new wood" i. Plants that bloom on new wood bloom in the summer or the fall because their flower buds are formed on branches that grow during the current growing season.

If you prune them in the spring, this will cause them to produce more branches and therefore will have more flowers. Plants that bloom on old wood bloom in the spring. Their buds were formed on branches that grew last year.

If you prune them in the spring, you are pruning last year's branches which have flower buds on them. The result will be few or no flowers because you have cut them off. Lilacs bloom on old wood. They should be pruned as soon as they stop blooming in the spring so that you don't cut off next year's buds. Pruning is actually good for them. It forces them to produce more new branches so they will have more flowers next year.

Pruning your lilac in the fall is just as bad as pruning it in the spring. You risk removing branches that have formed next year's buds. Always prune right after your shrub has finished blooming. Removal of dead or diseased branches can be done any time. It's a good idea, though, to check your shrubs in the spring before they leaf out when it's easier to see which branches are healthy and which are dead or diseased and need to be removed.

Your lilac sits in full sun, has great soil and is never pruned in the spring or fall and it still won't bloom.

Now what? A healthy lilac can live a long time. September 16, My two-year old lilac did not bloom this year or last year. Any ideas why? This is one of the questions most frequently asked of Master Gardeners in Ontario. The new buds form shortly after the flowers die back. Prune in spring immediately after the blooms have faded. Cut just below the faded bloom.