Pruning Honeysuckle
Tips for Pruning Honeysuckle Plants
Pruning honeysuckle plants is important if you want them to produce lots of flowers and maintain the correct size for your specific garden needs. Some varieties of honeysuckle can be quite invasive and can grow aggressively in your garden, so heavy pruning may be necessary. Otherwise, pruning honeysuckle is an appropriate management technique for these types of plants.
Honeysuckle is grown by gardeners for several reasons. They make excellent colorful additions to garden beds. They also can be grown as ground cover for erosion control or to disguise unsightly garden blemishes. Usually honeysuckle is grown on a frame support such as trellis or arbor and it makes a great plant to cover the side of a house or fence. Honeysuckle is easy to grow, tolerant of heat, has plenty of hardy varieties and blooms heavily in the spring and early summer. Their trumpet shaped flowers are known for their sweet scent and bright colors of pink, white and yellow. They also produce delicious edible nectar that is a spring time favorite treat of many. Honeysuckle can also attract hummingbirds and butterflies to your garden, and their red, blue or black fruit berries can help feed birds through the fall. This plant does best in full sunlight or light shade, well-draining soil and should be watered moderately. It can be purchased as started plants or easily rooted from other plants. It is a good idea to attach your honeysuckle plants to their support frame using flexible and loose fitting ties to prevent damaging the stems and to allow the plant to grow.
Pruning honeysuckle plants helps them maintain their shape and controls overgrowth onto other plants or structures. It also allows the plants to create more flowers and therefore more nectar. It is a good idea not to excessively prune a honeysuckle plant until it is well established, or about 2 years old. Pruning too much or at the wrong time may prove fatal for your honeysuckle, but these plants usually do pretty well. The difficulties usually occur with attempting to prune through the vines and knowing which variety of honeysuckle you are growing.
Aggressively growing plants, such as Japanese honeysuckle can be pruned just about any time to maintain control as nothing really seems to prevent them from growing back. For a regularly growing honeysuckle variety it is best to prune them in late spring after they have bloomed. This will cause them to grow faster during the warmer summer months. Prune the entire plant, not just the tops of the branches and vines. Honeysuckle vines are usually intertwined with one another, causing you to really have to get in there with your hands, but be sure to remove a large amount of the upper branches and the entire top half of the plant. A good height to leave the plant is about 2 feet tall. Some gardeners prefer to mulch around their freshly pruned plants to help conserve some of the water they will need to re-grow.
If the honeysuckle plant is overgrown and unmanaged, but is a healthy plant, you can prune it in the fall or winter. Again you will want to prune most the upper branches down to about 2 feet, and then pinch the growing ends down to help stub the growth. This will result in a bushier growth next year and more flowers.
Be sure to rake up and remove all of the debris from your honeysuckle pruning endeavors as these plants do root rather easily. Taking the time to manage and properly prune your honeysuckle plants will help ensure that your garden is filled with their bright colors, sweet smell and delicious nectar, all while helping to prevent your plants from taking over the entire garden.