My Morning Glory adventures February 2010

Oh I love your Current plan.
I have too many plants going around here.. remember the merrimia tuberosa I started in the cafe latte mcdonalds cup? well it is about three foot long now.. will show pics tommorrow.. getting ready for big wheels from Honda Headquarters to come in tommorrow so off to bed I go..

my daffodils that were starting to poke thru the ground have snow on them now :(

That's the amazing thing about gardening ... every year the garden beds look different! Always evolving and changing! Always interesting and amusing! Never predictible! Which is why I love gardening so much!

it's worse than being a kid at christmas, wanting to get started working outside. sitting back and watching the blooms.

sigh...

I hear ya, Phyllis! I guess Winter makes us appreciate gardening that much more! :-)

i have crocuses blooming now that the snow is almost gone. daffodils and irises peeking their leaves out.

wont be long.

This Chalice Vine was a teeny tiny piece ( about 8 inches long) when I got it last winter from a nice DGr... I am looking forward to gettng it back outside so I can hopefully see blooms this summer..

The shibouri up there in the post above has given me a pod..

Day off and I woke up to dark cold and freezing drizzle.. so.. I went down to the Garden and planted a ton of seeds..
thing I never heard of..like melittis melissophyllum, also called Bastard Balm..
I kept finding pods in my little net bags, and that meant I thought they were special, so.. Planted alot of noids that will surprise me I am sure.. but will prolly look familiar to me when they get going.. these are from my yard that are going right now..

I made up some spring and summer baskets, so hope they turn out good.. put some jishis x tentens in the middle of allysium and petunias, and put some gomphrema, camomile and creeping white daisys, a wild flower basket with bidens, flax, and lobelia. Here is a corner of things wintered over from DGrs that were kind and sent me things I never heard of before..

this has my I. lindeheimer and albevinia in this chair.. along with a few things I brought in for winter..

I took a walk around the yard the other day.. it looks all , shall we say.. BROWN?




looking directly north of my back door

This is an old recycled planter I brought in from fall, and it has chinese bean hyacynth, and a cutting from Dola brugmansia, and I just put a couple morning glory seeds in it.. those are tomatoes in the short cup there, and an i. batata cutting in the pink cup

this is a vacant bedroom, i call it the pink room.. it gets occupied by extra college girls everyweekend, but during the week I tend to my passion vines, rivera corymbosa, and other vines there.. I had to put up a trailing string for those passion vines, ( from another nice DGr)

here is the lantanas, i. indica, hibiscus and a few other things, they really like it there, the texas red star and the lantanas take turns blooming for me..

Petunias in the icecream sandwhich container are up and going now....

I have green showing in these stir straw plastic containers

This is a combination of hot lips salvia, macho fern, lantanas and a few other things.. hot lips was blooming in december, but is resting now.. I divided the macho fern to make two more starts they came to me as a few fronds last summer...

more vines growing from my own seeds..

this is Cooter... he is about 9 yrs old they said.. he always comes to see me when I go out to feed my wildlife.

This is looking directly south of my back door.. you can see why I try to cover that fence area in vines..

I am so ready for Spring, but feel like it is here already..

I am pretty excited.. someone gave me a tiger lilly bulb at round up.. it is coming up in the pot downstairs, up in a dingy old west facing window in the freezer room. YAY!... anyway.. as I listen to the rian and wind and sometimes the peck of ice balls.. I feel good that I played all day , went to a movie with my Joe, came home and played all night. After watching that depressing movie, ( The Road) I am so grateful for what I have even tho it isn't new or fancy, it is warm and dry.

I was feeling artsy one day.. this is a vinly bag that was outside on the south fence, called a pocket garden planter, it is sitting in a circle with coral vine, turbina, rivera corymbosa, and a few other things.

to the left you can see the i. platensis that the little pots are sitting around. it has woke up also. Peach and red yvonnes salvias are up and ready to start going..

tomatoe plants are going to be ready by april for the garden

I am so glad I brought in the impatiens.. this hot pink is in the main garden area, the hot bright red is blooming in the back room basement garden.

Shrimp plants are still blooming, and the jasmine sambuc has buds now.. all the brug cuttings, salvia cuttings, coleus, tropical milkweed and hibiscus cuttings are rooted and leafing.. buds are forming on the tropical hibiscus.. I might just keep it all in this summer..
just kidding..

Debra - Your green room is such fun to see! I don't know how you remember the names of everything. I guess if you grow them long enough, the names stick? LOL!

Congrats on all the sprouting seedlings! Your yard will look fantastic come Spring/Summer. Looks like you add more and more new plants to your collect every year! I don't know how you keep up with all of them! How do you even keep up with the watering. It looks exhausting to me, but enjoyable to me!

My yard looks similar to yours. Lots of brown, very little green. And all growth is gone to the ground if not gone completely. :-( So much for growing tropicals in Florida! LOL!

Thanks, Becky.. you know I have read your posts and you have tons more names to remember than I do when it comes to your i. nils and i. purps, not to mention all those tropicals that I am still having a hard time to learn. Thanks to you and other Generous DGrs, I have more than the usual Pink, Blue and Purple morning glorys. What fun! Someday, Maybe I will have a nice organized display, like yours and others that have posted, but for now, it is just me that does the gardening around here.. and with my hurt arm/elbow/whatever it is.. I am afraid I might not be able to lift and carry up things like normal. I love looking at the pretty white lattice fence background with a beautiful speckled flower in front of it.
Your photos and others that have posted, have inspired me to keep pushing for the unique.



Southwest Corner BackYardshot.

I have so many things I have been trying to plan colour wize, I almost have to wait for the prenniels to pop up to see where I have planting room as I have added so many more species and cultivars to my collections. So far, no prenniel vines on this area of fence, but I do have honeysuckle and english ivy and sweet autumn starts ready to plant .. I was hoping to get the Pandurata and hedge bindweed up and going out there.. I would stay with planters for the other morning glorys if I had those going.
this is the sweet autumn along the bridal wreath going west on the south fence.. I am going to cut that all out again, so the bridal wreath can breath.

Typically, The Dog Run Area is a holding spot for my seedlings , and a grow area for NEW things. Right now I am going to see if the two cultivars of Wisteria will bloom this year.. one is in the Old Elm Tree, and the other is on the East dog run fence, since it put out so many runners last fall, I am hoping. I also planted some new prenniel salvias and penstamons, another variety of honeysuckle, two pawpaw trees, some elderberrys and blackberrys sticks. The Kansas Poke plant, and the new Kansas Sumac bush are back there as well. I am moving one of the huge barrells up front , to showcase some i. nils. That is a job that me and joe are not looking forward to LOL

I need to get a cutting of that huge evergreen bush that the neighbors have in their back yard to the south of me, she doesn't know what it is, and neither do I until I get a close up of it, but it seems to stay green all winter, and I like that.
This picture view is of a hoya that I recieved from dolly last winter, it is shooting out new growth, and there is one of the many I. carneas on that table that I grew from seed last winter, on the other side of that table is my Salvia Anthony Parker, and some texas sage.

here is I. meremmia Siberica.. it is a cute tiny little thing..
I hope Everyone Has a great week!

Debra - Your I. meremmia Siberica is a sweet little vine! :-) As far as fences go ... my white fence is just a prop. The good thing about it is that everything shows up well against it. When we put in the fence, I had no idea about that. I chose the vinyl hoping it would last longer than our old wooden fence. :-)

I just love the variety of plants you have growing in your yard. It looks fabulous! I envy you. I can't grow most of them here in the ground. Soil is not good at all. And each year it seems to get worse. Pots are becoming my new way of gardening. Which does not make me very happy. Your garden beds and yard are simply wonderful! You're so lucky! :-)

Hi Debra,
Loved your photos! Your basement botanic garden must be a great consolation for you until spring. In places where we have hard winters, the winter landscape always looks so woebegone.
The plaque with the Claude Monet quote is really cute, I love it :-) I have never had any luck germinating merremia seeds. I followed the instructions on the packet. I was wondering how you got them to germinate. I noticed Becky has coaxed the Chinese Evening Glory to germinate and grow, but I have had no luck at all with the seeds I have tried. There are 4 seeds left, and started with 25!

Quaint, The only seeds I have soaked and nicked have been those big merremia tuberosa seeds, and some obscura seeds and that was after waiting for 6 weeks and then dug them out to see what was up, and those were the last two out of 20 I have tried. All I do is put them in the little pots, tamp them down, sprinkle a little fine soil on top and spray them. I use peroxide in my spray. I know how you feel about going thru seeds, but I keep trying. I do know if I cover them with a top, they sprout faster, but then when you take the top off, they wither up. so.. I like them sown out in the open air to tuffen them up. My darling daughter Rose got me that hanging claude monet thing. She hates to be around the plants and the bugs that come with them, but she loves me and knows I love to garden.
Becky, container gardening is awsome, cuz you can move them around to get different looks.. my soil is hard clay, I just keep adding the composted leaves, sand, gypsum, and coffee grounds when ever I can. it gets kinda layered. Have you tried the lasagna method yet? I did one row last summer, south fence area, outside about a foot to widen it.. laid down cardboard, then leaves, then composted grass clippings, then soil. it did real well for my impatiens... but it is hard on the back lugging all those bags out there. I love your raised beds. Dh doesn't want to take up any more lawn space for more Garden. Ha! I will sneak it on him this year.
Just got home from taking College girl back to Arkansas City to the dorm, we drove 45 miles in the blowing snow, my hands hurt from white knuckling it while listening to a Korean boy band on her cds. I can't imagine her driving in that kind of weather, no lights out in the country.. on the way back home it was done, but I passed a horrible accident where two cars had collided into the ditch and cliff. I am still hyped up. supposed to be sunny in the am. thank goodness! a weekend without sun just has me all grumpy. Here is a picture to brighten me up..

This is a beautiful lav purple i. purp from Ronnie climbing a tall yellow evening primrose last year. If anyone wants any seeds from the primrose, just send a regular sase with a regular stamp. I prolly have thousands of them. I will be pulling them up this spring as they sprout where I didn't get them cut off before they seeded. ( along with the rouge mg seedlings)

Thanks Debra! I will try your method to germinate the Merrimia. That's something I haven't tried yet.
Sarah

What I did was use boiling water to soak them in for about a day I kept the water very hot.. then it was easy to nick them.. I used a clear plastic cup with a lid, filled with seed starting medium and vermiculite, lid on and in the south window and up they came..keep us posted on yours!