Pruning Lilac

When's the best time to prune a standard lilac?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
For ever. We got an emailquestion from Ken. You can always email
Fred. It's Fred at plant talkradio dot com. And Ken says,
do you prune a standard lilac inthe fall or in the spring? I
don't want to lose the blooms.Okay, Well, let's go to the
word standard, and I'm going tosay almost all lacks. Now, in
the recent past, the breeders havecome up with lilacs that will flower in

(00:22):
the spring and then reflour in thefall. Let's just stay with what we'll
call the standard, which is thespring blooming type. The odds are that
the flowers for the following year havebeen set in bud form on a lilac,
and almost all lilacks by a monthafter they've bloomed. Now, each

(00:43):
kind of lilac, you know,well, large and small and big leaf
and so on and so forth,can all vary a little bit as to
when they bloom. But try toget involved with the pruners and the roupper
cuts within the first thirty days afterthe flowering. Now that doesn't mean you
have to wait till the very lastflower is over, but when the peak

(01:04):
has been reached and it's down kindof downhill and other things now are taken
over. In interest, I woulddo the pruning on a lilac right then,
because they indeed do set their flowerbuds this year or the current year
for the following spring. Now let'sgo the next step. The type that
flower both spring and fall, youwould prune following the bloom, you would

(01:26):
let it go ahead and prune.Hope, I'm sorry, flower again in
the fall. Then follow up withpluning right after that. That's the best
recommendation. Then the next thing inconsideration is that you can continue to prune
a lilac if its size, orif it's if there's some reason that it's

(01:48):
in trouble or giving you trouble ona sidewalk or whatever. You can prune
the plant after the flowering. Youjust will be cutting off flower buds.
So and I have one that's inkind of that situation. It fits in
its place very nicely for the firstfive six years. Then it got to
be too big. Okay, oncethe flowering is over, and I almost

(02:14):
always carry a pair of pruners inmy pocket when I'm out in the yard.
It gets trimmed on the side that'soffensive, that is out near the
path. I trim it somewhat carefully, try to save some of the newest
flower or flower buds as such,but then the back of the plant and
the top of the plant don't getprune very much at all, so I
still have a flowering plant, butit doesn't look quite like a normal lilac.