Pruning honeysuckle

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Q: My husband went up to our deck to cut off the seeds before they dropped and continued to prune back all the ” dead branches ” ( he’s been told never to clip or prune without supervision) now the plant is naked. Will it come back? how long before it will bloom again? Thanks for your help,he is really in the dog house!!

You can relax: although mid-summer is not an ideal time to prune your vine, honeysuckle is very resilient and, particularly if it’s a fairly mature plant, a good pruning will reward you with new healthy growth. The flowers, however, may be a little sparse – if at all – next year, but after that, everything will be growing happily again.

Keep watering regularly and applying a general fertilizer plus a mulch of rotted organic matter to help promote healthy re-growth for a couple more weeks – your vine’s new growth will then still have a chance to harden off before the cold weather.

Please do let your husband out of the doghouse now!