If you share with the state of Arizona, with every farmer in the nation, and with me an antipathy for the strangling growth and the prolific brittle, white roots of the morning glory, yet take delight in the pure joy of its morning blossoming, grow it in the house.
Confined to the limited reaches of a flower pot, its roots are no threat to the field or garden, and its stretching, wayward vine can be restricted to the narrow dimensions of a small trellis.
Growing Morning Glory Indoors
It can be grown quite successfully as a winter house plant from seed started in September or October, but it blooms its prolific best if grown during the summer, for it is a real lover of warm, sunny weather.
Perhaps the best method is to start one plant in April and another in September, discarding the one as the other comes into bloom, thus assuring an almost continuous blooming without putting up with a plant that has become straggly.
My favorite variety for either indoor or outdoor use is the annual ‘Heavenly Blue’, a prolific bloomer whose superb trumpet-shaped blossoms measure from 4 to 5 inches across.
Its petals are truly a heavenly blue, and its yellow heart is pure distilled sunlight. Variety ‘Blue Star’ is a bit lighter blue, ‘Pearly Gates’ a clear shining white, and ‘Scarlet O’Hara,’ an All-America Selection, is a rosy red with a scarlet star radiating from its throat.
Every one of them will grow and blossom indoors. If you have the space available, what a glorious display the entire selection would make!
Planting and Care
The seeds are hard, dark, triangular pellets that should either be nicked sharply at one end with a file or soaked for 24 hours (no longer) in lukewarm water before planting.
Fill the flower pot with ordinary garden soil—possibly adding a soup of sand—and cover the seed to about twice its depth.
The pot you use should be no smaller than 6″ inches in diameter; plant only one seed in a pot. I usually tuck two or three soaked seeds in each pot, and then after they have been growing for a week or two, I pull out the extras.
This allows for the non-germination of an occasional seed and permits the choice of the strongest plant for specimen growing.
When the seeds are soaked before planting, they are often almost to the sprouting stage before going into the soil, which is why 24 hours is the limit for their bath. They will push their oddly shaped seed leaves above the ground within three or four days.
The plants will grow prodigiously, then, and a trellis or string arrangement of some kind (I use a small 12-inch plastic trellis purchased from the living and ten) should be inserted in the pot by the time the plant is three to four weeks old.
You may initially find it difficult to keep the long stretching stems entwined about the small trellis, but be persistent
Blooming and Flowering Characteristics
The first flower should open within 40 to 60 days after the first leaves appear, and within a few days after that, your plant should be covered each morning with a whole galaxy of star-centered blossoms.
And if you protect them from the extremely hot rays of the sun by even so much as a wire window screen, the blossoms will not fade by midday as is their habit but will remain bright and lovely until as late as 5 p.m. in the summer. In winter, the early coming of darkness causes the blossoms to close up earlier.
The opening and closing of these blossoms are a lovely tiling to observe. The buds grow from 2 ½” to 3 ½” inches long—a pale greenish-white darkened at the pointed tips and spiraled like an auger shell. These spirals gently unfurl like an umbrella loosened from its case.
And at the end of its day, the flower fades (the blue ones turn a rosy pink), the edges of the petals curl themselves in, narrowing the perimeter, and the remainder of the blossom then rolls in over that thickness like a stocking being rolled on a rubber garter.
Watering and Feeding
The morning glory, confined in the house, will demand a great deal of water. Give it enough to keep its leaves green and open, but do not leave it standing in water, nor water it so frequently that it grows only a tremendous vine and fails to bloom.
If it is past time for it to bloom, simply withhold the water briefly, and it will set buds in a few weeks.
I’ve found that it will need to be fed about every three or four weeks to continue blooming freely.
This past summer, I used a very high-potency liquid fertilizer (15-30-15), and in the three months from June 15 to September 15, my one house-bound Heavenly Blue’ morning-glory plant bore 328 blossoms, by actual count, having as high as thirteen blossoms at one time.
When the flower count dropped to two or three per day, it was the signal to feed again.
44659 by Mary Mcfarland Leister