Morning Glories: Becky's garden - Summer 2010, 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
In this post above ( http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=7998623 ) you can see the vines in their containers all lined up along my fence. Most of those vines were spaced anywhere from 2 -3' apart. I have decided to now only grow one or maybe two vines per 4' x 6' bed. The I. nil and I. purpurea vines get really large here. And they like to climb everywhere ... including to each other. If you have ever had that happen, then you know what a bear it is to separate them without breaking or cutting the vines. I have to try to stay on top of it every day. After a while it is a lot of work to babysit them. Which is also why I only grow about 15-20 at a time.

I know everyone got a LOT of seeds in the seed swap. And I apologize for not growing at least one seed from every packet, but I just don't have the room or time or money it takes to do that! I am a selective MG gardener. I personally favor the the I. nils and I am selective about growing cultivars or crosses that are new to me. There are so many cultivars (not to mention infinite crosses), that I could never grow them all in my lifetime even if I started at 15 years old! lol And new hybrids are developed every day in Japan and around the world including here in the USA! :-)

I also like other plants as well as other vines as you may have observed by the other plant photos in this thread.

Trying to keep a vine from being crossed with another cultivar is tricky. If they are too close together, open pollinating can often occur. I know there are a lot of folks here who like the true "pure" named cultivars/hybrids. If you are very careful, it can be done. Vines have to be some distance apart, not right next to each, to prevent that from happening. But even then, bees do fly across my yard to land on a different cultivar's bloom and you know the rest is history!

I gave up trying to keep mine pure two years ago. And I became fascinated with crosses. How else would we get some of these mind-blowing vines/blooms? So I warn everyone who doesn't already know ... if you trade with me, you're very likely to get a cross! It's no secret as many have traded with me in the past and were often surprised by their blooms. The blooms didn't look like mine. And that is probably the case with any crossed cultivars. And it DOES happen a lot!!! Just look at all the folks who come to this forum trying to ID their blooms because they can't match it up from DG PlantFiles or some other source on the internet.

Here are two of my vines (NOID pink and Pink Silk) trying to sneak past me by getting a little too cozy! You can bet any bee around will be crossing these two! LOL! It's amazing how far a single vine can reach to get to another MG! I've had some that reached 6' behind the containers and I didn't even know it until I saw the bloom come up two garden beds away! LOL! Sneaky is not the word for these little darlings!