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Don't
neglect your lilacs
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With their
blossoms gone, lilacs have finished earning their keep. Until next
spring, the bushes will go unnoticed. Before you turn your back for
the year on your lilac bush, though, prune it. Annual pruning keeps
a bush within bounds and happily and abundantly flowering.
To prune a lilac, you need a pruning saw, a pair of loppers,
and a pair of pruning shears. Use the tools in that order, moving
progressively from larger to finer cuts. Never use a hedge shears to
prune a lilac. The finished bush should look like a fountain of
green, not like it just had a crew cut.
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Peer in at the base of
your plant and you will notice various ages of wood growing up from
ground level. Your first step in pruning is to cut away, within a
foot of the ground, some of the oldest wood. If the clump that makes
the base of the bush has grown too wide, selectively cut oldest wood
from around the edge of the clump.
Next, take your loppers
and lower some of the older stems that remain. Again, strive for a
fountain effect, cutting back wood that is too tall or that droops
too much. In either case, when you shorten any growth, cut it back
to a vigorous side shoot.
Besides removing large stems, your
cuts also remove spent flowers at the ends of all those stems. Those
spent flowers would have developed seeds, and now all the energy
that would have gone into seed formation can be channeled into
flowers for next year.
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