Cultivation and Maintenance of Honeysuckle Bonsai
The editor introduces you to the topic of making honeysuckle bonsai, focusing on the cultivation and maintenance of honeysuckle bonsai. Details are as follows:
Honeysuckle blooms at the end of April and stops pinching at the end of March. Apply phosphorus and potassium fertilizers, spray P333 twice to thicken leaves and shorten branches. May is the peak blooming period, with an ornamental period of about 30 days. After flowering, routine management is carried out. In August, short pruning is done, reverting to the pinching management of February to March, and the second bloom can be seen at the end of September.
The name "honeysuckle" is beautiful, symbolizing wealth, happiness, and flowers. Medium and small honeysuckle bonsais sold during the Spring Festival have good sales and high prices, making them a tree species loved by the masses.
Honeysuckle is a semi-evergreen twining shrub of the honeysuckle family. The flowering period is from May to October every year, initially white, turning golden yellow after three days, fragrant. It is naturally distributed in most areas of the plains, mountains, roadsides, and dykes in China. Although honeysuckle is tolerant to poor soil, deep, loose, and fertile humus soil is the best.
Honeysuckle has a developed root system, is highly adaptable, not strict with soil, and easy to survive. Bonsai is basically free from diseases and pests, drought-resistant, flood-resistant, cold-resistant, heat-resistant, and tolerant to poor and salty soil. However, it prefers warm and humid climate, loves sunlight and fertilizer. Sufficient sunlight and fertile soil can make honeysuckle grow and develop vigorously, with robust plant shape, thereby increasing the number of branches and flowers.
In addition to ground planting, honeysuckle is also a rare material for ornamental flower and stem bonsai. Due to its larger branches, although the trunk shape is robust and ancient, the branches are very brittle and easy to break and rot. Do not easily change the shape and angle of larger branches, and do not twist the main trunk and main branches as in other hardwood bonsai.
I. Selection of Honeysuckle Stumps
Although honeysuckle has various stumps in nature, not many are suitable for making bonsai. Therefore, it is necessary to choose stumps with developed roots, robust trunks, ancient appearance, with bending changes, compact tree shape, thick and short internodes, and natural contraction transitions.
To cultivate honeysuckle bonsai, you can also plant short internode, easy-to-bloom honeysuckle seedlings in deep, loose, and fertile soil where they grow rapidly for directional cultivation. When they reach the ideal thickness, they can be potted for cultivation. This way, you can enjoy both the flowers and obtain ideal honeysuckle stumps, achieving multiple benefits.
II. Cultivation Management
Honeysuckle bonsai can be planted throughout the year, with the best time being at the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. To ensure good growth of honeysuckle bonsai, you can plant the surviving honeysuckle cuttings at the end of autumn and the beginning of winter in an ornamental pot that matches the size of the stump, and then cultivate it with prepared fertile humus soil, covering the surface with green moss and watering immediately to facilitate survival.
Due to the limitations of the cultivation container, honeysuckle bonsai often needs to be supplemented with water and nutrients. Especially during the growing season, fertilization should focus on phosphorus and potassium fertilizers, applying decomposed cake fertilizer once a week to promote robust branches and vines, laying a good foundation for the next year's growth.
From winter to the following year's germination, planting and pruning can be carried out. According to the needs of the bonsai shape, generally keep 3-5 main branches, with each branch retaining 2-3 buds, and all other branches and vines are pruned, which is the key to rapid shaping. Also, after each flowering, be sure to prune and shape the branches in time with fertilization to achieve the effect of multiple blooms.
Honeysuckle bonsai's bud removal and pinching work is very important. Based on honeysuckle's growth characteristics and shaping needs, multiple bud removals are required each year. Especially in early spring, each internode of honeysuckle is full of uneven buds. At this time, it is necessary to recognize and promptly remove strong, twining buds that may disorder the tree shape, control twining branches, remove weak buds that cannot bloom in the future to avoid affecting ventilation and light, and retain only the normal growing branch buds that can bloom, usually cutting them at about 20 centimeters, with most branches capable of flowering, and more flowers. For long branches that affect the tree shape, pinching can be done first to ensure a compact and well-ventilated tree shape without any twining branches.
Honeysuckle bonsai requires important fertilization and watering management during the growing season. Only with sufficient fertilizer and water can honeysuckle grow normally, but growth cannot be left uncontrolled. During this period, water should be withheld flexibly according to the growth situation to control the tree shape, increase the number of flowers, prevent excessive growth, promote stem maturity, shorten internodes, and dwarf the plant. Generally, in addition to applying decomposed cake fertilizer once a week, 0.2% phosphorus acid potassium solution should be sprayed on the leaves 2-3 times. Before the flower bud formation, less or no nitrogen fertilizer should be applied, and more phosphorus and potassium fertilizers should be added. After the branches stop growing and during the gestation period, nitrogen fertilizer should be applied appropriately to promote large and colorful flowers.
III. Disease and Pest Control
Honeysuckle bonsai has basically no diseases and pests during cultivation. A few branches may have brown spot disease and powdery mildew. The main control methods are: regularly removing withered branches and leaves; applying more phosphorus and potassium fertilizers to enhance the resistance of the branches; spraying 65% zinc omethoate wettable powder 500 times solution at the beginning of the disease, or using half-strength Bordeaux mixture for spraying prevention. Pests include the caterpillar eating young leaves and the coffee borer eating branches. Commonly used are 0.1% fenvalerate or 95% crystal diazinon 800-1000 times solution for spraying. If the number of pots is small, manual removal is the best, simple and practical, economical, and pollution-free.
Morphological Characteristics
Honeysuckle is an evergreen twining vine, with strip-like bark peeling, hollow branches; leaves are opposite, ovate or sub-cordate; the flowering period is long, lasting 2-3 months. In the Yangtze River Basin, the initial flowers usually appear in mid-April when potted. Common varieties include red honeysuckle, white honeysuckle, and everblooming honeysuckle. Red honeysuckle has a red corolla on the outside; white honeysuckle is white when it blooms and turns yellow later; everblooming honeysuckle blooms continuously from spring to late autumn.
Biological Habits
Honeysuckle prefers a warm, slightly humid, and sunny environment. Although it can tolerate shade, it easily causes the plant to grow too tall, with weak branches and small leaves, and is not easy to bloom, affecting the beauty of the plant shape. The optimal growth temperature is 12°C-26°C. If the temperature is too low, it can cause the leaf surface to turn red and slow growth. This is due to the obstruction of sugar metabolism, resulting in the synthesis of more anthocyanins. Honeysuckle is not strict with soil, adapting to both acidic and alkaline soils, drought-resistant, and flood-resistant, but should not accumulate water in the pot.
Propagation Methods
Propagation by seeding, cutting, layering, and division. Generally, cutting and layering are mainly used. Cutting with the stem cutting method is very easy to survive. In suitable temperatures, cutting can be done throughout the year. Take a healthy stem segment, 10-15 centimeters long, insert it into a matrix of vermiculite, perlite, and yellow sand (1:1:1), with a cutting depth of half the length of the cutting. After watering, keep the soil moist, spray 1-2 times of mist on the cutting in the morning and evening to maintain air humidity, which is conducive to wound healing, and roots can form in 20 days. For layering, first scar the base of the branch, then pile up 20-30 centimeters of culture soil above, and keep the culture soil moist. When roots form, dig up and separate from the mother plant for separate cultivation.
The above introduction to the experience and knowledge of cultivating and maintaining honeysuckle bonsai aims to provide you with some help after reading this article!