Gorgeous morning glory vines bloom in early September
We’ve been waiting all summer and now the morning glories are finally blooming. There’s no point in trying to rush them, you can’t be impatient with them. You just have to resign yourself to the fact that you won’t be seeing any flowers until early fall. Our very first ones just appeared a few days ago, the first week of September.
It’s very satisfying when they finally do bloom, maybe because the long anticipation has something to do with it.
Their late flowering start means they have a short blooming season, going only until the first frost.
Morning glories are annual plants meaning they sprout, grow, flower and produce seeds all in one year, then die back for winter.
The type of morning glories we plant into flower gardens are native to North America. While there are other weedy plants called morning glories, they are completely different plants, causing much confusion among people who have never grown garden morning glories.
Because they grow as a vine, most gardeners grow their morning glories on trellises, posts, or other upright structures rather than letting them trail over the ground. They can easily reach 10 feet tall or more if they have something to grow on. They do their climbing by winding around objects, so are not able to climb up a sheer wall unless the gardener attaches twine or mesh to give the vines something to wrap on to.
While they will reluctantly grow in shady areas, morning glories really thrive in full sun.
Some gardeners plant their morning glory seeds directly into the soil in the spot where they want the vines to grow. The seeds are somewhat sensitive to temperature so it’s best to sow the seeds once the soil reaches 60 degrees or so.
Morning glory seeds have a hard seed coat that prevents them from germinating right away. Soaking the seeds for 24 hours will soften the seed coat enough to encourage the seeds to sprout. Or you can scratch or nick the seeds with an emery board to get the same results.
When starting out with a new variety, we like to start them in pots first, then set them out into the garden; it gives the plants a head start and ensures the seeds germinate. The problem with starting them in pots, though, is once they are growing, they immediately start winding themselves around everything they touch, even each other, causing a tangled-up mess. The way to handle that is to provide each plant with a stick or small trellis for them to climb on and keep the pots separated. You also have to check them pretty much every day to move the vines back in to position if they start to grow in an unwanted direction.
There are many different varieties of morning glories that come in a wide variety of color. The classic flower color for morning glories is bright blue but they also can be found in white, pink, red, purple, and even bi-colored.
Their trumpet-shaped flowers open in the morning and close after just a few hours. The hotter and sunnier the day, the quicker they close. During cool, heavy overcast, cloudy days, they will stay open longer. During one overcast day this week, ours were still open at 1:30 in the afternoon. However, by 3 p.m. they were completely closed. There’s no need to be too disappointed with the quick closing of the flowers, though, because there will always be more tomorrow morning.
Once the flowers close, they shrivel up and fall off the vine leaving behind a capsule that will eventually form a few seeds. If the spot where the vines are growing is warm and sunny in the spring, the plants can reseed themselves year after year.