#6: The Glory of Morning Glories May 20, 2019

Hey, I never have taken the classes nor the exam to earn my Master Gardener’s License, but experience has given me the same education or better. 

My wife did take the courses and pass the exam.  She is a certified Master Gardener; well, …she’s a Mistress Gardener.  As such, she and I often don’t see eye to eye regarding plant care and are equally hard-headed enough to agree to disagree.  We wind up planting separate his and hers pots in a silent competition.  Neither of us ever gloats; I just quietly harvest more and better herbs, veggies and flowers.  Case closed.  It seems that a lifetime with dirt-covered hands beats three months of book learning. 

While I love my pragmatic “from garden pots and planters to kitchen pots and pans” fresh veggies and herbs, my beautiful flowers hold a special place in my heart as well.  Nonetheless, with age I have become an admittedly lazy, low maintenance gardener too.  I have fond memories of my days as a rose tester for Jackson & Perkins and my membership in the New Orleans Rose Guild, but that was three decades ago.  I am too tired to play so hard nowadays. 

My garden is mostly confined in containers on the front porch and in my sunroom.  Everything I grow now is pretty much no maintenance/no care.  Each plant is chosen to give me the most food, flavor, beauty and smiles for my minimum investment in tendance.  This led to my rediscovering the joys of morning glories a few years ago.

I love my morning glories.  And whether you are an aspiring or an experienced green-thumb, I highly recommend that you plant some.  True, they don’t really have a fragrance, but they’re just so pretty.  Seeing them is a great way to start the morning. 

I like to go out just before sunrise with my cup of coffee.  As the daylight opens, so do the morning glory blossoms.  It happens quick enough that you can actually watch the flowers unfold their beauty.  Pretty cool.

Each flower lasts for only a day, but a single vine can have a dozen or more blooms simultaneously. 

Two things to keep in mind in positioning them.  They can grow to 12 feet long or longer.  They need something to climb on or should be placed in a hanging basket.  Furthermore, they are heliotropic. All the flowers do their best to open facing eastward toward the sunrise.  You want to place them to the west of your viewing area so they will be facing you.

One good thing about morning glories is that you only ever have to buy them once.  Each flower will produce a pod containing four to eight seeds.  Let these pods dry on the vine and collect some to plant next year.  I have plants growing now that are descendants of my flowers in China three years ago.  Any pods that are not collected will drop to the ground and self-seed for the following season. 

When planted in a grounded pot or planted in the garden, a trellis is a must.  Don’t worry that it won’t be tall enough.  When the vines reach the top of the trellis, gravity will naturally bend them to the sides and down.  This just thickens the plant and results in layers of leaves and flowers.

I also like mine in hanging pots so they drape down.  Yes, they can grow long enough to reach the ground, but mine never do.  Scissors are used to keep them where I want.  To do this, always cut just above the leaf node where the paired leaves come out.  This also helps to thicken the plant since two vines will grow out, one from each side:  more vines=more flowers. 

You can also increase the number of blooms by dead-heading.  Dead-heading is just pinching off the dead flower at its base, which encourages the plant to bloom again.  Face it, the flowers only last for one day, then look ugly while forming their seed pods.  I usually collect a few pods throughout the season to plant next year and dead-head the rest to enjoy more flowers this year. 

Beyond that, to get the most flowers from each pot, over-plant.  Ignore the instructions on the seed packet.  An eight inch pot can healthily sustain 8-12 plants; a 12 inch pot readily handles 20-24 plants.  Sure, more plants require more water, but you will likely be watering anyway.  The leaves will let you know when to water. 

On a hot day, the leaves will often droop and look like wet T-shirts.  This isn’t to worry about much.  But if they still look this way in the early morning, they definitely need water.  Get the watering can. 

Otherwise, another thing I like about morning glories is their low maintenance requirements, which are basically none other than watering.  If they’re planted in good soil—use your homemade compost, they need zero fertilizer.  Moreover, they are not susceptible to a lot of pests nor diseases.

Unless they are kept way too wet, root rot, leaf mold and fungus is never given a chance to have ill effects. 

Their only common pests are spider mites and snails/slugs, both are easily prevented.

If it looks like someone has sprinkled the leaves with ground cayenne pepper, those little orange grains are spider mites. You can usually blast these away with a garden hose.  Keeping the whole plant misted with a mixture of dish-washing soap and water will help keep spider mites away, but this requires a few minutes easy work and it has to be re-applied after a heavy rain.

For the slugs and snails, used coffee or tea grounds and crushed egg shells keep them away from all the plants in your garden.  These nasty grumbly-grimbleys have slimy yet very tender skin.  They avoid crawling over the coffee or tea because the acids burn them.  The crushed up egg shells cut them if they crawl across.  It’s like us trying to walk on broken glass.  Yes, you can buy diatomaceous earth to do the same thing.  But why spend the money and end up with another partially used bag to store in the garage?

One more thing to consider is compatible planting.  I always consider this when planning and planting any pots and gardens.  Essentially, some plants benefit each other; others do their best to wipe out their neighbors.  This depends on the chemicals/nutrients they use and produce.  Others just downright hate each other.

For example, with every herb or veggie among my pots, you will surely find onion or garlic growing.  Sure, you can spend money on these at the garden center, but why?  Since I don’t use the white bottom of green onions and they’re dirt cheap in any grocery, I use those.  I cut the tops off for cooking, leaving two to three inches of the white and roots intact.  Stick these in a jar with water and in a few days I just stick them in the ground nearby the other plants.  Not only do the onions give more flavor to the crops, they act as a natural repellent to many insects.  As lagniappe, I never have to buy green onions again, just scissor off what’s needed for any recipe.

On the other hand, never plant corn and tomatoes near each other.  The pollen of the corn makes the tomatoes sterile and the pollen of the tomatoes makes the corn sterile so neither will produce anything except further animosity between the species. 

To get the most from your garden, Google “Companion plants.”  You’ll not only learn a lot of interesting trivia, you’ll have a lot more fun in the garden while garnering better produce.

For my morning glory friends, I strongly recommend moon flowers as the perfect companions.    Planted in the same pot, as the morning glories fade with sunset, the moon flowers open:  vice-versa in a summer-long 24/7 cycle of beauty.