I never get out into my garden until June sometime. Every spring, I look all around me and I see people scurrying to Greenfield Farmers Coop Exchange, buying everything they need to get their garden up and going. Me, I just never feel the urge until after Memorial Day. Could be because I'm doing other things.
I've been in a full blown gardening craze the last couple weeks - trying to get things in before it is too late. Just last week, I found a beautifully illustrated package of "Heavenly Blue Morning Glories" and decided to plant them even though it is the middle of July. I have lots of morning glories that re-seed themselves but they aren't that drop dead gorgeous blue/purple color. They are more like this one - pretty but not that amazing blue.
Many years ago, I read that if you soaked morning glory seeds in water for a day, they would come up quicker. It's amazing how quickly they sprout. I've put them in around the yard now and with a little luck, I'll have lots of pretty blue flowers to photograph this coming fall. They grow like crazy. In fact, they are considered invasive in warmer parts of the country. Yikes - read about how hard they are to get rid of. But here in New England with our cold winters, I plant them and love them!
I guess all plants are weeds somewhere and garden plants somewhere else! What are your thoughts on Morning Glories? Love or Hate? Do tell!
14 comments:
I love the color and tenacity of morning glories, but we have its nasty white cousin - the field bindweed - in our area and it's a real pain for farmers, myself included. I once saw a DIY porch trellis using morning glories planted in a window box and trained up twine fixed to a beam above and would love to try it, but wonder if they could go rogue - a la field bindweed. Dread the thought!
They're among my favorite flowers because the blue ones are my absolute favorite color. It was too wet this spring for them to start--the seeds just rotted in the ground. I don't even mind the wild ones that strangle everything though it drives my neighbor crazy that I don't pull them up.
When I was a child growing up in southeastern Massachusetts we always had trellises covered in morning glories. Usually they were pink or purple. it was a special treat to get a package of seeds to grow Heavenly Blues.
Now I live in the west and rarely see any kind of morning glories except the hated little white ones.
Carolyn
Love! And I have that exact seed packet--I've saved it, thinking the image would be nice to use on a card or something.
Love them, but vigorously try to keep them from seeding in my veggies! I have mostly the vibrant purple ones courtesy of my neighbor's feral population.
I love morning glories and have never had a problem with them becoming invasive. The can re-seed but if you don't want the plant, just pull it up! Check out these varieties:
http://www.botanicalinterests.com/products/index/category:flowers/page:8
Well, here in Iowa, I never plant them, but they come up everywhere in my flower gardens (and yard) and choke around in the bushes, the crab apple tree, the cone flowers, the yew, the arborvitae, the rose bushes, the meadow sage, the primroses and marigolds, the petunias and impatiens; oh you name it, and a little vine of morning glory can be found coming up right in the middle of it and wrapping round and round and round. I pull them up and out every time I go out to water or weed. Poor little things never get a chance to bloom, well hardly ever, but in order to save all my other flowers, shrubs and bushes, I have to be assertive! :)
Here in Rhode Island, I haven't found morning glories to be invasive, but the bindweed definitely is--I think because it grows so fast! Regular morning glories seem more civilized; they self-seed but they're easy to pull out. I love them--both the heavenly blues and the purple Grandpa Ott style, especially the two together. There's nothing more beautiful than a morning glory with the morning or afternoon sun shining through it, or a bud just about to open, almost like a seashell. I try to transplant all the ones that come up early around a single post, and then just pull out the rest. This year, I transplanted a few to live at the base of a fairly ugly sapling that had grown up through the stone wall that borders the garden (but which I keep because it's hard to pull out and the Japanese beetles eat it instead of the beans...), and I'm hoping the morning glories will cover it and hide it. So far so good!
I love morning glories, but worry that they might turn into that awful bindweed. That pest is so hard to get rid of. Once while on vacation somewhere in the west, the motel we stayed in had morning glories twining around every post on the front porches of the cottages. It was beautiful to see.
Love them! They were my grandmother's favorite flower and she used to plant them by our back porch on a string trellis where they would get the morning sun. When I got up in the morning, I often heard her voice "Well, good morning, glory". Hmm - maybe I'll go and try and find some morning glory seeds today.
~ loVe morning glories ~
I planted a type called Grandpa Ott's Morning glories, which came up last year but not this year, likely too cold first & now melting hot.
One of my little child friends still wore mittens in May, here in WI !!
Grandpa Ott's were deep dark purple, which I thought would look nice with the blues I had.
I guess I'm always delighted to see the glories bloom in random places, like giant hats for the faeries.
I do have the white bindweed at one corner of the yard too !!
I like that the glories still bloom so late into the crisp fall days.
happy day,
shell ~
I planted the same Morning Glories and some Moon Flowers around a tuteur in my front yard. They were quick to sprout after soaking, but are taking their own sweet time in growing. We don't have a lot of rain here in the mountains of NC. That may be the reason.
They are pretty to look at, but I'd never plant them. In my neck of the woods, near Chicago, they tend to take over and squeeze out everything else. I'd much rather plant natives. I love your blog. Thanks.
One summer I saw the blue ones spilling over a fence at the beach and I simply had to have them myself. I had the same seed packet full as yours. They were just gorgeous and didn't frenetically re-seed themselves like the purples are apt to do. I still love them but never quite get around to planting them in the spring. We have the wild ones as well, in white and a very pale pink. I like them, but pull them up where they are unwanted. Happy growing!
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