I'm not sure the liming accounts for the flowering. Lots of lilacs around that people aren't liming. They all bloom anyway.

If you didn't cut the flower buds off when you deadheaded then these would be expected to open next spring. Same as with rhododendrons, you have to watch for and avoid these buds (or the new shoots that will produce them later) when you remove the spent flower-heads.

Yes, if you let the pods develop fully before cutting them off you will not have prevented the shrub from expending energy on them. At that point you are just taking them off to tidy the plant up.

Never limed a lilac in my life and the three big shrubs in my old garden bloomed heavily every year. Seldom even pruned them much and certainly never bothered to deadhead - most of shrub was well above head height and too difficult to reach. Never seemed to affect flowering at all.

I concur that the timing of the liming and bloom was probably coincidental. Lime's main use is to change the chemistry of the soil to aid in uptake of nutrients from the soil. Some plants cannot properly uptake nutrients from the soil when the soil's pH is too acid, but I've never seen any evidence that lilacs are too picky about the soil pH. If that were the case, the plant wouldn't be able to uptake *any* nutrients, and so it would be sickly, stunted, have weak stems, and fail to thrive. Lime does supply calcium and magnesium, which are secondary macronutrients, and used in whole-plant nutrition. Calcium builds strong cell walls and magnesium increases cholrophyll in the leaves. Calcium is available by breaking down phosphorus, available in any fertilizer with a high 3rd number.

On the subject of fertilizing - If you use a fertilizer that is too high in nitrogen (the 1st number on the fertilzer label), such as the fertilizer you use on your lawn, or the lilac is planted where the lawn fertilzer comes in contact with the root zone, you will have luxurious leafy growth, but few (or no) blooms.

The mineral that plants use to produce blooms is actually phosphorus, which is the 2nd number in the N-P-K rating on fertilizer labels. But, with lilacs, adding a high-phosphorus fertilizer is never a guarantee that you'll get blooms. Lilacs are known not to bloom until they are several years old, or when they are stressed, or when they don't get enough sun. Plus, lilacs, in general, need a period of cold (called vernalization) for flower buds to form. There are some cultivars that are bred for reduced chill requirements. I've included a link to an article that lists several lilacs that bloom in mild-winter climates below. Also, if you prune them at the wrong time of the year, you could be cutting off the buds for next years' blooms .

Additionally, lilacs bloom only on year-old wood. If your lilac is 10 years old, it might need a severe pruning to remove old wood. Every year, you should remove the oldest trunks (termed 'rejuvenating' the lilac), because they are only going to produce leaves, and will never bloom again. The suckers that are coming out of the ground this year will produce blooms in the future, so you should encourage those suckers. I had a friend who was cutting them off as soon as they came up, and didn't understand why her lilac wasn't blooming. Well, it's because she was removing the future blooms by cutting off the stems they'd develop on.

Having said all the above, though, I don't want you to think that lilacs are difficult to grow. Sometimes the worst mistake people make with lilacs is trying too hard and fussing too much. Lilacs actually don't have high nutrition needs, and as long as they get enough sun, they usually do fine by themselves. There's a reason why lilacs bloom so well in the yards of abandoned homes.

So there are the basisc of lilac culture: chill period (unless you have a low-chill cultivar), sun, suckers, proper pruning, proper nutrition - and benign neglect!

Here is a link that might be useful: mild-weather lilacs

>you will have luxurious leafy growth, but few (or no) bloomsAlthough constantly repeated this is not necessarily a guaranteed outcome. For instance, a basically barren apple orchard in New York was discovered to have a nitrogen deficiency. After nitrogen fertilization was undertaken fruit production resumed.

There is no direct cause-and-effect relationship between nutrients and plant growth. Nitrogen does cause leafy growth, but leaves are where the plant produces its food, in the form of sugar. More food means more fuel to grow fruit. More leaves also means more roots, and more (quantities) of nutrient uptake. The morphological processes in plants are complex and still being explored. Simply put, nitrogen causes leafy growth, but it also has other effects. Whether the effects are caused directly by the application of nitrogen, or indirectly by stimulating metabolic processes in the plant, the effect is the same.