Medicinal Cultivation Methods and Technical Key Points for Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle is a perennial evergreen climbing plant, and the entire plant has multiple medicinal values. To cultivate medicinal honeysuckle, the following points should be done well:

1. Select good varieties. For medicinal requirements, the branches should be thick and strong, the structure reasonable, and it should have many flowering cycles, abundant flowers, good quality, and high yield. For example, Jizhua Hua and Damao Hua are relatively good medicinal cultivation varieties.

2. Choose soil and build the garden. Choose a plot with open ground, loose soil, convenient drainage and irrigation, and sandy loam soil rich in humus as the planting garden. Scattered plots in front of and behind houses, beside ditches, and beside ponds can also be used for deep plowing and soil improvement, applying 50 dan of farmyard manure per mu, and forming beds 1.2 m wide.

3. Cultivate strong seedlings. Honeysuckle is mainly propagated by cuttings. Before budding in early spring, select cuttings with 1-4 buds, remove the lower leaves, and insert them into the prepared seedbed as they are cut. Shade and water them. In dry seasons, spray water once in the morning and once in the evening, and water as appropriate during the day according to soil conditions. After the cuttings take root and grow leaves, gradually remove the shading material, and apply diluted organic fertilizer at 1-2% once every half month. As the seedlings grow, the fertilizer concentration should be increased. After half a year, they can be transplanted into the field.

4. Scientific management. Fertilize before plants sprout in early spring or before cold waves in early winter. Open a trench or ring-shaped trench beside the plant, and apply 10 kg of decomposed organic fertilizer, 0.1 kg of ammonium sulfate, and 0.1 kg of superphosphate per plant. From May to June, apply decomposed dilute organic fertilizer water 2-3 times as a top dressing to accelerate seedling growth. For adult plants, in order to increase the number of flower harvests and improve flower quality and yield, 0.5-1% potassium dihydrogen phosphate can also be sprayed on the leaves during the flower bud differentiation period of each flowering cycle. The ideal plant shape for medicinal honeysuckle is a small umbrella-shaped shrub that is short, upright, and has many branching levels. This must be achieved through pruning. The specific method is to cut off the upper half at a trunk height of 30 cm to promote the buds below the cut to sprout into branches, retain 4-5 branches that are evenly distributed and relatively similar in thickness, and then cut off the upper half of branches at each level. Before sprouting each spring, the garden should also be thoroughly cleaned, cutting off dead old branches, decayed and damaged branches, thin and weak branches, shaded branches, and root suckers, and destroying them centrally to reduce disease sources and the insect population base. The main insect pests of honeysuckle are aphids and coffee tiger longhorn beetles. The former damages leaves and flower buds and should be controlled in time. The latter bores into the xylem of the vine stem as larvae, causing hollowing of the main trunk. The control method is to manually hook and kill them during the larval stage, or use cotton balls soaked in dichlorvos solution to plug the holes, then seal them with mud slurry. The main disease is honeysuckle brown spot disease, which generally occurs severely in summer and causes brown necrotic spots on leaves. At the early stage of the disease, spray with jinggangmycin.

5. Harvesting and processing. The medicinal part of honeysuckle is mainly the flower. When harvesting, both the flowers and the weather should be observed so as to pick at the right time. When the base of the flower shows blue-green, the top is milky white, the flower is about to bloom, the color is bright, and it has a glossy sheen, this is the best sign for picking flowers. Pick on sunny days when the dew has not yet dried, pick and place gently, and do not press with hands. To ensure the medicinal quality and properties of the flowers, flowers picked on the same day should be dried in time. On sunny days, spread the flowers evenly and thinly on a drying mat and let them dry naturally in the sun. On rainy days, heat and dry them. Build a square drying room indoors, place a heating device at the bottom, and set up layered drying racks inside, with 25 cm between each layer. Spread the flowers evenly on the drying tools, with a spreading thickness not exceeding 1 cm, and move them onto the layered racks. The initial drying temperature is 30-35°C. After 2 hours, raise it to 40°C. Keep it at 45-50°C for 5-10 hours. After about another 10 hours, most of the water in the fresh flowers has been released, and raise the drying temperature to 55°C. When the dried flowers crackle when pinched, crumble when grasped, have pure color, and a rich fragrance, they are ready. The drying process must be continuous, drying completely in one batch, and must not be stopped midway or turned arbitrarily. Because the drying method has many advantages and can better ensure the medicinal value of the flowers, it is more commonly used. They can also be lightly sun-dried first and then dried until fully dry.