Lilac bush should have started blooming a long time ago
Q: I have a lilac bush that is about 6 years old and has yet to bloom. It is a cutting from a well-established, always-blooming tree. My tree is about 6 feet tall and appears healthy, yet has never bloomed. It grows in normal soil in a strip alongside my house and receives sun about half the day. Is there any kind of fertilizer or soil additive I can use? I have seen single-stick seedlings in nurseries a foot high with blooms. What is mine missing?
A: You are right, it should have been blooming since it was very small. You didn’t mention which species or which cultivar you have propagated, but most lilacs are similar in flowering habits.
There are a couple of things possibly at work here, but if you already have successfully grown a lilac bush, you probably already know what I am about to say.
Lilacs have flower buds only on the ends of the branches. These buds develop in the late summer of the year before they bloom. If the plant is pruned between the onset of these buds and the blooming time, the flowers are cut off. By not pruning the plant this fall, you will be able to see if there are any flowers next year.
It is unlikely that you pruned back every branch on a 6-foot-tall plant, so there should have been at least a few flowers over the last few years.
Some species of lilacs have flower buds that are not as tolerant to late frosts, so maybe they are being damaged by freezing weather. Did you move from a warmer location to a colder one? Lilacs do prefer more sunshine than just a half day, but again, they will at least bloom sparsely in shady conditions. Most lilacs are tolerant of many soil conditions and pH levels, yet do they prefer a pH closer to neutral than too acidic. You could try fertilizing it with a fertilizer for roses.
I suppose that there is also the wild unlikely chance that the original cutting died and a new sprout of a weed of some kind was growing close by that was thought to be the lilac and you have been cultivating a different kind of plant all this time. You would need to compare the leaves of your plant to the original to see if it is the same thing.
Lilacs do get a lot of insect and disease organisms, but none are likely to only affect flowering. If the plant is growing well, and leafs out well, it should bloom each spring.
Q: I recently purchased two yaupon azaleas at a local nursery to put with other varieties — a pink ruffle Rutherford hybrid and a pink Girard hybrid. The nursery personnel could not tell me anything about the yaupons. They are compact plants with tiny green leaves. Do you have any information on these?
A: It always amazes me how ill-prepared some nursery employees are at knowing the plants they sell. I have never professed to know everything about every plant, but when I worked in nurseries, I at least knew where to look up the information. The employees should have been able to find a tag or a receipt from where they bought the plant to be able to help you. The kind of treatment you received was what you would have expected to receive from a hardware store that only sells plants seasonally. Even they are much better than they used to be at customer service.
There are many varieties of yaupons, from small trees to very small compact shrubs. They have tiny leaves that can look like some of the dwarf rhododendrons. If it is a holly, it will bloom with flowers that are hardly visible. While I like yaupon hollies, I don’t think you will be happy with these for your intended purpose.
Q: In a recent article, your reader thought that woodpeckers were cleaning their beaks on the cedar siding of their homes. I don’t think the woodpeckers are cleaning their beaks. They are looking for food. I don’t know if this will help your readers; but offer it from my experience.
I used to live in Georgia, and each spring the carpenter bees, which look like much bigger versions of bumblebees, would drill circular holes in my cedar home and place their larvae inside. Then, the woodpeckers would come by and tap, tap, tap to get at those larvae. Our solution was to look for the holes, which are always perfectly round, spray in some insecticide and then plug them with dowel stock, which we sawed off flush.
A: I appreciate your sharing your experience with my readers. I did mention insects, but carpenter bees were not on my list of possible choices. There are many wood-boring insects or insects that just live in the cracks and crevices of trees. Many of them move to wooden siding on homes, where they become pests. Woodpeckers just see the siding as another location to find a meal. They are doing the homeowner a favor by eating the insects, or at least making the homeowner aware of the potential problem. At the same time, they might also become part of the problem. Your solution was a good one, if somewhat time-consuming.
E-mail questions to Jeff Rugg at jlrugg@pondsupplies.com.