Why Lilies Do Not Flower, and How to Get Buds Every Year

This year's flowers were decided last summer

A lily bulb is a food store and a factory in one. Through the summer after flowering, the leaves manufacture sugars that are packed into new scales, and inside that thickening bulb the flower buds for the following year are formed and closed away long before you would ever see them. By the time the stem dies down in autumn, the whole of next year's display already exists in miniature underground.

This is the single most useful thing to understand about lilies, because it explains almost every disappointment. A stem cut low for the vase, a plant defoliated by lily beetles in early summer, foliage lost to fungal blight, or leaves tidied away while still green all remove that summer's factory. The bulb goes into winter smaller than it came out, and the following year gives fewer and smaller flowers, or none at all. Nothing you do next spring will fix a bulb that was underfed the previous summer.

It also explains why a newly planted bulb flowers regardless of how you treat it. The buds are already inside it, formed on someone else's growing season. The real test of your conditions comes in the second year, and a group that flowers beautifully the first spring and poorly the second is telling you about the summer in between.

Never cut a lily stem down while any part of it is green. The dying stem is still moving food into the bulb, and a stem removed in late summer costs you flowers ten months later.

The usual reasons a lily comes up blind

Too much shade is the most common cause in an established garden. Lilies want at least six hours of direct sun on the stem, and a group that was in the open five years ago is often now under a shrub that has grown across it. The stems get taller and thinner as they reach for light, and the buds get fewer.

Overcrowding is next. Lilies increase by making offset bulbs beside the parent, and after four or five undisturbed years a group can become a dense mass competing for the same water and food. The sign is a cluster of many short, thin stems with small flowers where you used to have a few tall ones. The fix is to lift the group in autumn, separate the bulbs and replant them at proper spacing.

Planting too shallowly starves the plant of stem roots and keeps the bulb in soil that heats and dries in summer. Poor drainage rots the base of the bulb so it never reaches flowering size. And a bulb that arrived already dried out and shriveled will often produce leaves and no bud in its first year, then recover in the second if conditions are good.

Bud blast is different and worth recognizing. The buds form normally, then turn yellow, shrivel and drop off before opening. That is a water problem almost every time: a sharp check in moisture while the buds were swelling, or roots sitting waterlogged so they cannot take water up. Steady moisture through the bud stage prevents it.

Getting the most out of the flowering season

Feed for next year, not this one. A high potassium liquid feed every two weeks from the point buds appear until about six weeks after flowering finishes is the most productive thing you can do for a lily, because that whole window is when the bulb is being rebuilt. Stopping the feed the moment the flowers fade wastes the most valuable part of the season.

Deadhead as the flowers go over, but be precise about what you are removing. Snap or cut off the individual spent flower and the swelling seed pod behind it, and nothing else. Seed production is a genuine drain on the bulb and gains you nothing, since lilies are far more easily increased from scales or offsets. The stem, the leaves and the bare flower stalks all stay.

Expect a group to build for two or three years and then hold. A lily that gave three flowers in its first year and seven in its third is behaving exactly as it should. When the count starts falling and the stems get shorter, that is the signal to lift and divide in autumn rather than to feed harder.

1. Start the potassium feed when the buds appear A fortnightly liquid tomato feed from visible bud onward supports both the current flowers and the bulb rebuilding behind them. Stop only when the foliage begins to yellow in late summer.
2. Keep moisture steady through the bud stage A dry week while buds are swelling causes them to yellow and drop. Water deeply at the base rather than lightly and often, and mulch to even out the swings.
3. Deadhead the flower and pod only Remove each spent bloom with the small green pod behind it as soon as the petals go. Leave the stem and every leaf, which are still feeding the bulb.
4. Count the flowers on each stem Write the number down against each group. Rising counts mean the bulbs are building, a falling count over two years means overcrowding or shade, and no memory is reliable enough to notice the trend.
5. Feed for six weeks after the last flower This is the part most gardeners skip. Next year's buds are being formed inside the bulb during exactly this period, and the plant is still working hard even though it looks finished.

The record that answers the question

For each group, note the number of stems, the height of the tallest, and the number of flowers per stem, once a year at peak. Three years of those three numbers make the difference between guessing and knowing, and they distinguish an overcrowded clump from a shaded one long before either becomes obvious.

Note when the foliage yellowed and when you cut the stems down. A plant whose leaves died in midsummer because of beetle damage or leaf blight is a plant that will disappoint next spring, and having the date written down turns a mystery into a straightforward explanation.

Finally, record where the sun actually falls on the group in midsummer, not in early spring when the trees are bare. Light changes across a garden faster than anyone expects, and the note you make this year is what tells you, three years on, that the lilies did not decline; the shrub next to them simply grew.