Question

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The browing is most of the plant. I have other plants planted around it and they are find. It must be the soil or watering problem. I will wait for my flowers, hopefully they will be great. Thanks
Followup To

Question -
I live in southern Michigan. I bought 2 new lilacs bushes(primrose,charles Jap) 2 years ago. I was wondering when can I expect blooms. I was told it could be up to 5 yrs. The leaves are turning brown on one of the bushes. Can you tell me what could be causing this?

thank you

Answer -
Yes, Lilacs seem to take an awful lot of time before they get around to blooming.  You should always plant the largest size you can find, and get it in the ground before you do anything else in life so you can still be around when it finally sets buds.  

I understand several plants are like this, I think Wisteria is one of them.

Regarding the brown leaves, there could be several things wrong.  Remember, I am the Long Island Gardener, so I don't know what your weather was like this past month and I don't know what the temperature or the rain's been like.  

Powdery Mildew is a frequent problem with Lilacs, as with other plants.  Bad watering will also do it -- too much is one kind of brown, too little is another brown.  Pruning your lilac is absolutely out of the question -- I hope you know that, because you might just cut off the stalks as they're getting ready to bloom and you'll delay the first flowers at least by a full year if you do that.  So take it easy with the pruning shears.  If you feel you just need to prune something pick on some evergreens.

Lilacs need alkaline soil to be happy.  Make sure you are not pouring Miracid or similar low pH on these bushes.  If you've got them, burned wood ashes are the ultimate mulch.  I have Madonna lilies blooming under our Lilac bushes and they are all pleased as punch with that alkaline soil.

Remember that saying, A watched pot never boils?  Try not to watch your Lilacs too much.  I know it's hard.  And the first season bloom is sweet and sour -- very sparse, but what a relief to finally see flowers after all this time.  The next year is better, then the next year after that is even better, and next thing you know your Lilacs are blooming all over town and you're cutting them to bring to friends.  But until that finally happens, try not to watch that pot, Dianna.

If you can tell me about the browning leaves, I will try to give you better information. Are all the leaves affected, or is it just the leaves at the top/leaves at the bottom?  Is this bush getting watered every day for a few minutes a day?  Is it perhaps underwatered?  How's the feeding going?  Let me know and I'll see if I can clear this problem up.

Answer
Dianne, is there any possibility someone accidentally spilled too much fertilizer or something else that would damage the roots and prevent water from being distributed to the leaves?  Because it sounds like that may have been the problem.  

Any watering program would have reached the other bushes.  So this one is getting something the others did not get.  Something bad.

If all the leaves are affected, equally, this would probably be a root problem - possibly caused by something that burned the roots, which can be caused by fertilizer accidentally spilling without being diluted enough (I did this to our lawn a month ago with Superphosphate).  That's not a difficult mistake to make.

If someone picked up a garden hose with searing hot water in the hose already, then turned on the faucet and expelled the sun-heated water, watering that lilac would burn the roots.

Likewise, a soil problem - assuming these Lilacs are planted as a group of 3, please confirm that - would affect all Lilacs in the same vicinity.  Same goes for diseases and insect pests.

Please review and let me know if any of this sounds like a possibility.  Thank you for writing.