Spring has arrived in Indiana. My daffodils have started blooming and I have started ridding flower beds of winter debris and last year's dried stalks.
Some Proven Winners Show Off Forsythia will find a new home in my garden this spring, just as soon as the danger of freeze is gone. Yellow reinvigorates me after a long winter. If your forsythia is blooming, enjoy it for a few more days. If you plan to reduce the size of your forsythia by pruning, the right time is after it blooms. That gives the plant all summer to grow and create bud for next year. If you wait until the end of the season to prune, you will trim the new buds and you will have little or no bloom in the spring of 2010.
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Remember, many woody flowering plants bloom on old wood. Another old wood bloomer I love is the lilac. The buds on my Miss Kim Lilac (a dwarf) are beginning to swell. I'm expecting beautiful blooms next month.
Again, trim lilacs after the bloom fades to ensure spring 2010 blooms!
Thank you for the tips. We've never been quite sure when to prune our lilac!
ReplyDeleteWishing all the best to the wonderful people at Gardens and Such. :)
Hi Anne. Follow our blog on your blog. The helpful tips will keep coming!
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I think our forsythia got nipped this spring. We've seen 2 small blooms and now it's leafing out. We didn't trimmed right after bloom last summer, knowing that we shouldn't touch it in the fall if we wanted long bloom-filled stems this spring. Too bad.
ReplyDeleteAnne, if you need to reduce the size of your lilac, you can cut 1/3 of the old canes to the ground each year for three years. Select the canes so they are scattered throughout the plant. You want to maintain a balanced plant shape and taking 1/3 of the plant down to the ground in one spot will spoil its shape and make you sad:( Wenda
ReplyDeleteNathan,
ReplyDeleteBoo hoo. I'm sorry, but you are probably right. If they were budded and ready to open when you got your last really cold blast of winter, the buds probably froze. You might check the branches for poor little limp buds. Since you know what to do to produce buds for next year, when the shrub is fully leafed out, decide if you want it smaller for next year, then prune. Forsythia is very much like spirea, in that you can actually cut it down and it will come back full force and more beautiful than ever this summer.
Wenda