Starting Morning Glory Seeds Indoors
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By Glory Lennon
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There’s still snow on the ground and yet the stores are bursting with garden stuff. Stands of flower, vegetable, and herb seeds are everywhere. They’re even pulling out the lawn tractors and barbeques for our enticement way before winter’s fury is spent. Yes, it seems everyone’s anxious for spring but none more so then those of us who love to start our summer blooming beauties indoors, especially the wonderful and lovely Morning Glory.
But we have to keep our heads. It may be way too early to start planting willy-nilly. Check first with your local garden center or botanical garden for the last spring frost date for your area if you don’t already know it and add two weeks. Believe me this one folks. I made that mistake the first year I planted my beautiful tomato plants on May 15th, our supposed last frost date. Two weeks later a killer frost did my entire veggie patch in. Don’t let that happen to you!
Once you have that magic date go back six weeks and circle in on the calender. That’s when you should start your Morning Glory seeds. Other veggies and flowers could be started 2-4 weeks before that but for Morning Glories six weeks is better. If they get too spindly growing indoors they might not produce as many flowers as you’d like unless you clip them back. Also if they’re still small when you plant them outside they’re easier to attach to a trellis or fence and they’ll be less likely to get all tangled up.
We could ague for weeks, months, perhaps years but I say the most coveted annual plant is the Morning Glory vine. My only rational for this conclusion is that I can never find any Morning Glory seeds at the stores if I wait to buy them at the appropriate time for planting them. There are always tons of Marigold, Impatiens and Cosmos but the spot for the Morning Glory, botanically Impomea, is always bare. So, if you are determined to have these growing in your garden, run down to the store as soon as you can or you’ll have to order them from a mail-order catalog.
Not that ordering seeds from a mail-order place is bad. It’s actually great for getting unusual and different cultivars of the Morning Glory and dozens of other flowers even those somewhat boring Marigold, Impatiens and Cosmos. If you are bored with the flower selection at your garden center flip through Seymore’s Select Seeds catalog. You’ll be enchanted. Be forewarned; you could easily spend a king’s ransom with all those new varieties to choose from, so pace yourself.
Once you have your Morning Glory seeds in hand you’re likely to read the back of the pack for instructions and start scratching your head wondering if it’s worth the trouble. It’ll say something about the seeds having a tough seed coat which needs penetrating by nicking the tiny seeds with a knife or filing it down or some such nonsense. Don’t believe a word of it. You have no idea how many people I know who actually sit there and nick far more than the seeds with a sharp knife. I don’t know about you but I don’t like cut up fingers. Bandages interfere with my typing and also with planting seeds.
Thus I will tell you the oh-so-easy way of getting those seed coats to soften. Just place them in a small bowl with warm water and allow them to soak overnight. By morning they should appear a slight bit swollen or at the very least you’ll see the outer coat split to reveal some white. That tells you they are ready to sprout. Now you’re ready to plant assuming you got some nice potting soil when you bought the seeds.
Some folks like to plant annual seeds in flats but I don’t recommend this for Morning Glories. Vines have a tendency to get a bit tangled up in themselves if planted this way. They also don’t much care to be handled roughly. This is the reason it is best to plant them after the danger of frost outdoors in the place you want them to grow. With care they can transplant well but they don’t like it and they might sulk for a few days or simply refuse to flourish. To ensure they get the best start in life I suggest peat pots, or homemade pots made from biodegradable newspaper or the tubes on which paper towels and bathroom tissue is found. Cut down to a manageable size, 3-4 inches high, these cheap pots won’t disturb the sensitive roots and can be planted whole into the garden. So the soil doesn’t leak out of the bottom of the tube place it in a recycled yogurt cup with a couple of drainage holes pierced at the bottom.
Now that you’ve got the pots in line and the seeds soaked and ready to sprout plant them the potting medium a half inch deep and water well. Keep them moist but not drenched. Place in a sunny window sill or if you have grumpy cats who refuse to relinquish their spot like mine do get a grow light. If your kitchen is warm the top of the fridge could work. But if your home tends to be on the cool side you might consider investing in a warming pad but again I have a cheaper solution to that. Placing the un-sprouted pots on top of the dryer while you’ve got a load going will do just fine and if you have an old electric blanket, that’ll work too.
Once they are sprouted and growing, slack off on the water a bit and wait for the snow to melt, the last frost date to come and the sun to brighten our world. Ah, spring! Don’t you love it? You will when your yard is ablaze in Morning Glories.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
For more fun gardening facts and amusing stories come visit me at
http://www.helium.com/user/32782
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