also, if anyone knows, do honeysuckles flower on new growth? is there a pruning method that would encourage rebloom?
thanks in advance, all you lucky Real Balcony owners! :)
heidi

The Mandarin survived the winter (which saw the first single digits here in 7 years - luckily for just one day). I did have to cover it with some row cover in mid spring when it started sprouting but we were still getting some frosts. Now it's taking off. It hasn't bloomed yet but I expect it will soon, just based on the new growth on it so far.

The new heckrotti is blooming up a storm, which is good. What is bad is the powdery mildew on it which I am treating weekly - but I expect that is also partly weather to blame.

You can root and top prune them as they bloom on new growth. I would let them get established some before doing any major pruning. You could usually see what parts of the vines survived the winter as they will be the first ones to sprout some leaves.

I expect depending on the cultivar, you could prune after a first flush to encourage a bushier plant where it can start some new vines. I noticed when researching that some have flushes and then intermittant reblooms and others seem to go on and off all summer. So I guess it depends on which one you get.

This was my Mandarin recently:

And my Goldflame:

The Goldflame of which booted out my traditional moonflower spot. LOL That center vine in that Goldflame pic has since hit the ceiling!!!!

And this is only after less than 2 weeks since the earlier pic was taken. The plant was a 1 gallon that I bought May 1, and it had been pruned back to about 2.5ft when bought.

I would say be prepared to guide them to where you want them to wrap because at this point, my poor Mandarin ran out of someplace to attach and doubled back on itself and is headed back to the trellis. LOL

no problem about places to attach, though, because the fire escape has those ugly metal railings. :)
heidi

The plants I put in there were 2-qt for the Mandarin and gallon size for the Goldflame. Ironically, I ended up putting the Goldflame in the smaller pot, but it doesn't seem to mind so far.

The 8" "half" would be half of a 16" full, although it is much shallower than the usual 16". Similarly, the 10" half would be 20" if full.

I think standard 16" pots are about 10 gallon equivalent. Half would be 5 gallons and take about 1/3rd of that to account for the shallowness... So I'd say the 8" half-round is probably about 3 gallons equivalent.

Similarly, the 20" would probably be about 15 gallons, then half would be about 7, then making it shallow would take it to probably about 4 gallons equivalent, based on the way that particular pot was shaped (in order to go around a square fence post).

Just a thought.

i'm taking safety into account -- the egress route isn't blocked.
thanks again for your concern :)
heidi

All you need is one ambitious rookie who needs to fill a ticket quota. LOL!

thanks! :)
heidi

Is there any hope for digging up any of my flowers and potting them, or should I begin with new plants? Is there anything that doesn't work well on a balconey or can you essentially plant anything in a container?

Jacque

You can grow anything you want provided you give it the conditions that it needs with respect to amount of sun, water, some fertilizer, good well-draining soil, and a right-sized container to accomodate the plant.