Honeysuckle Dropping Leaves

hdpete_2

Hi,

My honeysuckle is new this season and has grown tremendously well. I have been feeding it regularly but have just come back from a week's holiday to find that it has dropped many of its leaves on the lower 1/3 of the stems. I gave them a good feed and water before I went away (tomorite).

There is plenty of fresh growth and the upper portion seems to be doing well still, but some of the more established leaves have a mould appearing on them.

Can anyone shed any light on what the possible cause may be and is there a recommended course of action? See Pics below (sorry about the multiple posts, but I needed to get my post count up to post pics)

It is growing against a south facing fence, but gets partial shade as it is directly underneath an apple tree. There were quite a few fallen apples around the roots, so it may be possible that these have tainted the soil (?).

Regards
Pete

hdpete_2

another new user message so I can post pics

hdpete_2

another post

hdpete_2

another post

hdpete_2

getting bored now

hdpete_2

bumpity bump

hdpete_2

sheramber

Could be powdery mildew.

Mojisola

Can't see any pictures but it's quite normal for honeysuckle to drop the lower leaves. If you look at other honeysuckle plants, you'll see a lot of bare stems lower down.

It's often recommended that you plant them where you can put a smaller plant in front to hide the bare stems.

It won't help that the plant is under a tree - it's probably a bit too dry for a honeysuckle to be at its best.

hdpete_2

Mojisola

sheramber wrote: »

Could be powdery mildew.

Now I can see the photos, I'm with sheramber.

Stress makes a plant more susceptible to mildew so if you can give the plant more water in future, that will reduce the problem.

You can buy sprays to control it in the meantime.