I've had very good luck with adding liberal amounts of composted cow manure
and bone meal in the fall, along with a generous layer of mulch and watering
deeply. As others have suggested, deadheading the spent blooms, as well as
cutting out a third of the very oldest large canes, works wonders.

Dave

"JNJ" wrote in message
...
I don't know why but my lilac flowers are so bad the last few years, I
pruned them and they were a little better.One person told me to get a
fertlizer stick a pound it down in the roots..Anyone know much about
them.I
live in wisconsin

Probably the biggest issue with non-blooming lilacs involves pruning at
the
wrong time -- it's a common mistake. To say the least, you do NOT want to
prune lilacs back in late autumn or early spring -- they bloom on the
previous year's growth so you might just be cutting off the soon-to-bloom
stems. Instead, prune after the bloom period.

Fertilizing can be helpful but before you fertilize you need to ask
yourself -- WHY am I fertilizing? Is the pH off, does the soil lack
certain
essential nutrients? The way to get the answer to this question is
simple -- a soil test. This will let you know where your soil may have
deficiencies. The solution is frequently to amend the soil with
fertilizers
or organic material/compost -- whichever you fancy.

If you find the pH is off (another common problem) you may want to simply
add ash from burned wood. Be certain that the wood you burn is not
chemically treated or otherwise contaminated -- chemicals have a nasty
habit
of sticking around even after burning. We've found that our soil is a bit
acidic and over the last couple of years we've added a decent amount of
lime
to the soil in an effort to balance the pH a bit. This has been very
effective and I have a great cool-weather lawn growing right now. My
lilacs
are somewhat separated from the rest of the plantings by virtue of their
beds, so in their case I added ashes from our cookouts (campfire style --
NEVER use charcoal ashes) and they liked it lots.

FWIW, HTH....

James