How to trim your Cape Honeysuckle for the most blooms

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If you have Cape Honeysuckle in the Phoenix area, you should be seeing blooms in the winter. That's one of the nice things about this plant, it blooms while your winter visitors are around. If there are no blooms it's probably because you're a neat gardener, and you have been trimming them all off.

So put away the hedge trimmers and get your hand clippers out. Yes, you can trim Cape Honeysuckle to be any size you want, and it's wise to, as it can get way too tall, but if you insist on trimming it with hedge trimmers, you're gonna clip off all of the blooms, and flowers.

To get the most flowers from your Cape Honeysuckle, think of it the same way that you think of roses. You wouldn't use a hedge trimmer on a rose bush, would you? And Cape Honeysuckle flowers on long stems, just like roses.

Go get your hand clippers and go look at your plant. Take the time to determine the difference between a branch that has the beginnings of a bud on it, and a branch with just leaves. Go ahead and trim the branches with leaves back as hard as you want. But leave the bud alone, and let it flower. After it flowers, you can trim it back with the rest of the plant.

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