Growing honeysuckle in pot

TheLittleBird

Hi there,

I have an east facing front garden that (obviously) gets sun for half the day. I'd like to grow an evergreen honeysuckle, hopefully Lonicera japonica var. repens, against / up our east facing kitchen wall. It's fairly sheltered and tends not to freeze. Trouble is, we have decking all along that wall, so I plan to put it in a big pot. I have one that's about 50cm wide and 60cm deep - would that be any good? Has anyone ever grown a honeysuckle in a pot?

Thanks in advance!

Dovefromabove

Hello and welcome Little Bird

Honeysuckle, being a woodland and hedgerow plant, likes it's face in the sun and a deep cool root run and will suffer from powdery mildew if its roots dry out.

If grown in a container it needs to be really large, deep and kept in the shade, and the soil needs to be kept moist (not wet, but moist). 

I suggest that John Innes No 3 loam based compost is the most suitable, and I would add a good helping of organic material to this I'd use well rotted farmyard manure and leaf mould. 

This earlier thread may be of interest  http://www.gardenersworld.com/forum/problem-solving/honey-suckle-mould-/-blight/726217.html

TheLittleBird

Thank you for your kind replies. Sadly I sing like a toad, but I leave seeds (edible and for sowing) everywhere; car, handbag, sink, so my partner has taken to calling me little bird.

I am now considering lifting a few deck boards and making a small raised bed planter against the wall, like a cube with no lid or bottom, filling it with compost and planting the honeysuckle roughly at deck level. Could even use a bottomless plastic pot or bucket. Then I'd replace the boards, trimmed as necessary to allow for the stem and watering. I could just lift a couple again for plant maintenance ad hoc. Then the roots would be cool and benefit from the raised bed compost and earth below. And I wouldn't lose deck space to a hoofing great pot...

Dovefromabove

That sounds like a good idea   make sure you use a loamy compost with added organic matter - ordinary multi-purpose compost dries out far too quickly for honeysuckles (and clematis too for that matter - they like similar conditions on the whole).

TheLittleBird

Thanks Dove, brilliant helpful advice. I feel a lot more hopeful and confident now!

Bronchitikat

I started off with our honeysuckle, don't know the exact variety but it has creamy-white flowers and has been, until the February cold snaps, flowering since summer, though not as profusely.

We have a concreted back yard.  I made sure the honeysuckle pot was over one of the cracks in the concrete so that it could, if it wanted, root down into the subsoil (or whatever's there).  It did.  

It is a bit of a thug and needs cutting back, hard, or it takes over that end of the yard, and anywhere else it can send it's coiling stems.  Possibly confining a honeysuckle to a large pot might help tame it's rampageous tendencies.  You never know.  I really need to take a pair of shears or a machete to ours, just to claim back part of our (very small) yard.  Though by now small civilisations may have evolved under the greenery.

Just one thing - Late Summer Pruning (or hacking back).  Prune it late summer and it's less eager to rampage back with a vengeance!  Though it will try.