Honeyberry Mound Layering Propagation

It is a wretchedly wet New Year's day here in Devon, UK, but I didn't let this dampen my spirits. I used it to propagate our honeyberry bushes (Lonicera caerulea). You probably remember these two little guys from my previous post last spring. Just looking at those photos, I hadn't fully appreciated how big both bushes grew last summer. Here is a snap from today of one leafless honeyberry, looking rather naked and forlorn on this winter's day.

Now there are several choices to make when thinking about propagating honeyberries. You can, of course, grow them from seed. Doing so, however, does not allow you to preserve the parent plant's variety and, as such, it is not recommended. We definitely want to retain good sized sweet berries. One of my bushes is the named variety of Kamtschatica 'Duet' while the other is an unnamed variety of Kamtschatica. I found it super difficult to source any honeyberries in the UK, so I felt blessed finding two different Kamtschatica varieties to buy at all. You must grow different varieties side-by-side that flower at the same time to ensure cross-pollination. Honeyberries cannot self-pollinate.  

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I've read you can also propagate honeyberries from cuttings. To be honest though, I'm suspicious of this suggestion because honeyberry stems are so very fine and spindly. I imagine it must be really quite difficult to keep humidity levels high enough around such cuttings to prevent desiccation as they attempt to root. So, this too is not a propagation technique I wish to pursue or that I recommend.

Instead, I chose a far less labour intensive approach which possesses the added bonus of letting me still harvest each mother plant's fruit this summer. This propagation technique is a variation of mound layering. Now, many descriptions of mound layering recommend you cut back the plant hard to just above ground level and then mound earth around the new shoots as they emerge in spring. This works well for herbs like sage and rosemary. Honeyberry mound layering is even easier though. You simply mound up a load of earth around the base of the plant, gently firm it down, water it in, and wait a year. You don't even need to use soil or earth. If you have a load of sawdust, for example, just go ahead and use that instead. 

I mixed up 50% well rotted garden compost with 50% coconut coir for the mounds I made today, and then capped each one with a further layer of pure coconut coir for added protection. The extra coir cap was just belt-and-braces rather than something necessary. I'll keep an eye on the size of the mounds over the coming months. If they start sinking too much, I'll top them up using the same technique.

In a year, when the time is right, I'll dig up the bushes to see how many new roots grew into the mound. This will determine the quantity of plants I can separate each parent into. As always, I'll keep you posted.