If your lilacs like slightly alkaline conditions then bone meal would make a good fertilizer. It is natural for lilacs to get leggy when they get old and just grow at the top. After all, they only bloom on new growth. You can remedy this by letting a few of the suckers that come up at the base of the shrub, grow. Then you will have two layers of growth, and when the old growth dies out, you'll have the lower growth to take over.

Practically all plants benefit from a good long drink of water fortified with epsom salts, 2 oz per gallon of water.
This will allow your lilac to make more chlorophyll, which makes food for the plant.

Good luck,

Lainey

Thanks, Lainey!

I'm planning to brew a big batch of alfalfa tea for my new rosebushes. I know I can add epsom salts to it, and I will check if I can add bonemeal as well. Then I can make up a special batch for the lilacs. Supposedly, alfalfa tea is like chicken soup for plants....it's good for what ails 'em, and seems to really help them to grow.

I checked this afternoon, and I have a lot of new growth coming up from the base of the shrubs. I'm going to let that grow in, and see what happens next spring. If the new growth is strong enough, then next spring (or the spring after that) I can take out the older, weaker canes.

I'm going to assume I should be able to feed them this mixture within the next two weeks at the most.

Anyone else with ideas, please let me know!

Emmie

Hello everyone:

I am reviving this thread to give an update. After some alfalfa tea and Miracle Gro last year (late spring thorugh early fall), my lilcas this year are looking a bit revived. The 80% of the older canes I was worried about have new growth on them. And they are not just suckers, either, they are actually showing new branches about 1/2 way down the cane.

So, this week, it is back to alfalfa, with Plant tone as a fertilizer (I'm trying to avoid the artifical stuff like Miracle Gro if I can), and the Epsom salts (which I forgot last year, darn it!) I'm very hopeful that this, along with some more judicious pruning, should help bring new life back to these shrubs.

If anyone has any thoughts or advice to add, please feel free! I'd love to hear from others who have nursed older lilacs back to health.

Thanks again,
Emmie

You can continue to rejuvenate your lilacs by taking out 1/3 of the oldest stems for the next two years, bringing the whole shrub down to size. BTW, don't start using stuff like Epsom salts until you have a soil test done. In my soil it would immediately toxify it.