Snail Vine /Vigna caracalla

Hi! This winter I purchased some snail vine seeds and successfully germinated them in my cold frame. This plant is not hardy in my zone (5), but I read somewhere that you can dig up the root ball and store it over the winter much like you would store a Dahlia. Has anyone tried this or does anyone have any suggestions for me. Thanks,

Lindsey

I know you can pot it up and grow it indoors over winter with minimum watering but I haven't heard of storing it like bulbs before.
Fortunately, mine get to stay outside year round.
Jan...

This message was edited Jul 6, 2005 8:40 PM

Yes, Lindsey, I am going to just make a houseplant out of mine. Is yours a Snail Vine or Corkscrew? I bought the Snailvine seeds off of ebay thinking it was the Corkscrew so then I bought a Corkscrew from Parks. Both seem to be doing ok. I am going to try to get seeds from both and will try to winter them over in the house.

Jeanette

Corkscrew Vine is the vigna caracalla.

I bought seeds of Vigna Caracalla last spring from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and last winter I brought a couple plants in the house and treated them as house plants, they did great, sure they lost their vines and the leaves got smaller but they didn't die. Now I'm waiting patiently for blooms.

Moko, when you brought yours in for the winter did you let it go dormant? If not, what kind of treatment did you give it (light exposure, watering, cutting back, etc.)? I bought my first one this year and at the rate it is growing I think it will be way too big to treat as a houseplant. I was planning on putting it in the garage with my brugs, tree rose and epiphylums and letting it go dormant. The garage stays in the 40 to 50 degree range and is pretty dark.

I treated them like my Brugs and watered sparingly and only watered when I thought they needed it, I was afraid of rot. They had a South exposure and the room tempt was in the 50 to 60 degree range.

As far as pruning goes, you can do it before taking them in, or do as I did, just let them dry up on their own. By Spring they'll look like a small stick with a few leaves on top.

LOL, moko, I could have started a compost pile in my garage with the fallen leaves from 2 brugs, a tree rose, and 2 large plumbagos that went dormant. But they all made it through the winter just fine.

One of the brugs (Charles Grimaldi) put out 100 blooms before it finally decided to settle down and go to sleep for the winter.

My very first corkscrew vine was in a gallon pot and the roots grew thru to the ground. When frost came, I cut the vine to about 4ft tall and cut the pot loose from the ground and put the pot with the vine in the garage(our garage did not freeze). It promptly lost all it's leaves but I still watered it from time to time(just enough to keep it from getting bone dry). I thought it was dead but in the spring, it started putting out new growth.

I wonder if you can do that with brugs? I mean cut off the roots and bring the pot in. That would be so great if I didn't have to constantly water them; they dry out so fast in pots alone..

If I did that with the vine (let the roots grow from the pot into the soil) it would probably grow a lot bigger and bloom sooner. Thanks for the good information, Calalily.