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Marjorie Peronto: My name is Marjorie Peronto and I'm with the University of Maine Cooperative
Extension.
Today we're going to learn how to prune a lilac.
It's important to prune your lilac yearly to keep it healthy and flowering profusely.
If you leave a lilac neglected for several years it becomes very congested in the center,
which makes it more subject to diseases and it also becomes too tall so that the blossoms
are way above your head and harder for you to enjoy.
So, in pruning our lilac today we have three objectives.
One, we want to keep the shrub open so that sunlight and air can circulate into the center
of the shrub.
Two, we want to stimulate growth of young, vigorous shoots.
Those will be the ones that will bear lots of flowers in the future.
Three, we want to keep the shrub at a reasonable height.
It's easiest to prune a lilac and any other deciduous tree or shrub -- that is, those
that drop their leaves in the winter -- in the late winter or early spring.
That would be in March in Maine.
The reason for this is, it's not actively growing and there are no leaves on the plant
to block our view, so we can really see what we're doing.
The disadvantage to this is that the flower buds for this year have already formed.
They formed last year.
When I remove wood from this shrub now, I'm also decreasing this coming spring's flower
display.
So, the other option is waiting until it flowers and going in immediately after the flowers
fade and doing your pruning, but for demonstration purposes we're doing it without the leaves
so you can really see what's going on.
So, there's three tools that you need when you're pruning a lilac that's been allowed
to get as large as this one.
The first one is a pruning saw and a seven inch blade is plenty to get into tight corners.
I really like the folding saws because, when you're done, you can just stick it in your
pocket and keep it clean.
The second is a pair of loppers.
These loppers are made to cut branches between an inch and an inch and a half thick.
OK?
The saw is for larger cuts.
Then the third is a pair of hand pruners and these are made for pruning pencil-sized branches
or smaller.
OK?
So, you're fully equipped if you have those three.
Make sure you keep your tools sharp so that you get nice, clean cuts.
If your tools are dull, you will tear or shred or crush the branches, leaving uneven wounds
that take a lot longer to heal.
There's a couple of approaches we can take when pruning a lilac if it's old and it's
been left neglected for a number of years and it's a tangled mess of stems with very
few flowers.
You might want to cut the whole thing down to within a foot of the ground.
That will stimulate it to send up new shoots but it won't start to flower for several years
and it won't look very good.
So, it will go through an ugly phase.
A less dramatic approach is to do this to renovate the shrub over time, taking a little
bit out over a period of several years, which is what I'm going to demonstrate today.
Now, I've already gone in and removed a few branches beforehand for the purpose of this
demonstration, so we can more clearly see what we're looking for.
So, the first thing to look for are the oldest, thickest stems in the shrub.
You want to find those and remove up to one third of them.
This will do two things.
It will open up the center of the shrub and it will also bring the height of the shrub
down, because the oldest stems also tend to be the tallest.
You want to remove them as close to the ground as possible.
You may need to take them out in stages, to avoid wounding other branches in the shrub.
The bark on young lilac shoots is very thin and fragile, so it's very easy to create wounds,
so we want to be careful and make very precise cuts.
The second thing to look for after you've removed a few of the oldest, thickest stems,
is what is called the three Ds.
That's dead, damaged and diseased wood.
Dead wood is brittle and has no plumb buds on it.
It's easy to see and that should come out at any time.
Damaged and diseased wood should be cut back to healthy wood or removed entirely.
The third thing to look for is crossing, rubbing branches.
When two branches are crossing and rubbing, as they grow they get thicker and thicker
and they create a wound there, at that surface, which is an entry place for disease organisms.
So, we want to alleviate that problem.
Then we look for any drooping branches that are hanging down too low and cut those off
to a healthy side shoot.
Lastly we take out pencil-thin suckers that are coming up from the base or twiggy growth
that is cluttering the base of the plant and then if there's anything that's growing outside
the boundaries of the plant, where you want it to grow, that should be removed as well.
Most or all of the cuts that you make on your lilac are thinning cuts.
Those are cuts where you remove an entire branch or an entire stem at its point of origin
to open up that plant.
Here we have the finished product for this year.
We have removed a lot of large stems from the center, I've taken out some crossing rubbing
branches, a lot of the dead wood...
All the dead wood I could find, drooping branches, little spindly things coming up from the bottom
and what is left behind are some nice, young shoots with nice, fat flower buds.
Those will grow into larger stems that will continue to produce flowers for a number of
years.
I still have some taller shoots, although I did reduce the height quite a bit.
These taller ones will probably come out next year.
I just didn't want to take it all out at once so that the shrub still looks intact.
As you can see the center is wide open, we'll have good air circulation in there, good sun
penetration and we still have a lot of flower buds left to give us a lovely display this
year.
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