Hi,

I recently planted four types of morning glories: kniolas black knight, Ushio, heavenly blue, and lavender silk. I planted them from seeds and they all grew. But after a week, my kniolas black knight and ushio morning glories died, while the heavenly blue and lavender silk ones are still growing. What went wrong? They all received the same treatment. If I want to plant another kniolas black knight and lavender silk seeds, could you tell me what I should or should not do? Thank you for your answer.

Kind regards,

A Rooking in Planting

Hi! to ATP!

Some plants are more demanding than others; even within the same general group.

Can you give us some particulars about growing conditions? Are they growing in the ground or in a container? Did you apply compost or mulch? What are you feeding them, and how often?

Hi Chelle,

When they were seeds, I soaked them in warm water for a day. I planted them in pots, one type in one pot, in a mixture of soil, husk charcoal and manure (3:1:1). If by "feeding" you mean giving them fertilizer... I haven't given them any (except for the manure in the medium mixture). I watered them once to twice a day, and put them under shade (not exposed to full sunlight). The ones which are still alive (the Heavenly Blue and Lavender Silk) are about 3 weeks old now and yesterday I moved them to a place where they'd be able to get full sunlight. They are quite resilient, so I'm not too worried about them. The problem is the ones which have died (Kniolas and Ushio). Did I give too much water, not enough water, too much sun, not enough sun? Btw, I live in a tropical city.

Cheers,
A rookie in planting

This is only a guess on my part - I have recently learned about the husk charcoal and that sometimes it retains too much moisture. Perhaps the two that did well liked more moisture and the two that failed would have preferred to be more dry?

I am also questioning putting manure in the mix too early on.

greene said:This is only a guess on my part - I have recently learned about the husk charcoal and that sometimes it retains too much moisture. Perhaps the two that did well liked more moisture and the two that failed would have preferred to be more dry?

I am also questioning putting manure in the mix too early on.

Container growing is sometimes tricky; plants that grow very quickly and vigorously can occasionally overcome soggy soils and prosper, while a slower growing neighbor in the same conditions might succumb to rot. If your containers are small enough to require watering twice a day in the shade, they probably won't be able to accommodate a fully grown plant in sun. You may unknowingly be over-watering your plants. Dump out any containers with losses and check the planting mix. If it's soggy or gooey lighten your mix (for future plantings) and lessen watering frequency; at least until the plants are accustomed to and growing well in the sun.

I've never grown plants in the husk charcoal, but I've received plant starts grown/shipped in husk materials and they all showed signs of rot. If you use it again I'd think you might mix it well with your other ingredients and only use it in the bottom third of your plant container. Most seedlings do best when started in a fairly lean and balanced mix, so the top two thirds of your container probably shouldn't have much in the way of husk or manure added.

Morning glories like to be fed regularly once they're accustomed to their sunny spot and heading toward bloom stage. Choice of fertilizer depends on what's available in your area, but the rule-of-thumb is to use a light concentration when plants are smaller and give a little more a bit at at time as plants head toward maturity. If you're using a soluble fertilizer this means that you'd use a slightly higher concentration of granules to the same amount of water as the plant grows, while not exceeding the recommended strength.

Hope this helps!

Chelle, I thought it was only the I. nils (the Ushio and Lavender Silk) that wanted fertilizer. I was told that if you fertilize the other types, you get lots of foliage and few blooms. I never fertilize my I. purpureas (which is what Kniola's Black is). Not sure about the tricolors like Heavenly Blue (they hate me!).

The fertilizers I use now are typically low in the nitrogen department and high in trace minerals, but I do use them on all of the morning glories. Heck, I'm lucky to get blooms by first frost anyway most years! I really have to watch that my plants aren't under-fertilized. I have some Japanese types with variegated leaves this year; some are only two feet tall now...they'd better hurry up and grow!

What sort of fertilizer are you using? I just this morning found a straggling Heavenly Blue, still in a 4" pot (!) with a lovely big bloom on it! So I moved it into a larger pot (thereby ensuring that it will croak, sigh). Maybe they'd like me better if I fed them?

Ack! Too late for this now, but if ever I need one of these plants to have more root-roaming room I set the container it's in into a bigger pot or set the nursery pot into the ground. That way the roots can travel through the holes when they need to, and I don't have to disturb them. I have some growing in my bog area in a bottomless pot this way.

woofie said:What sort of fertilizer are you using? I just this morning found a straggling Heavenly Blue, still in a 4" pot (!) with a lovely big bloom on it! So I moved it into a larger pot (thereby ensuring that it will croak, sigh). Maybe they'd like me better if I fed them?

I use a multitude of stuff on rotation :

Sprays:
Neptune's Harvest Organic Seaweed Fertilizer
Liquid Kelp Organic Seaweed

Soil drenches or tea made from different combinations of these:
Compost
Worm castings
Epsom Salts
Horse manure
Powdered minerals
A pinch or two of blood meal
Bokashi
Saved water from the aquarium
Pond algae (from our lake)

Basically whatever's handy at the moment. I just like to mix it up a bit -there's certainly nothing scientific in the way of feeding going on around here.

Hmmm, I supposed I could have just stuffed that pot into the larger pot. I've done that sort of thing before, just not with the small 4" pots. Maybe I'll try that next year! Since HB's hate me. I was absolutely astounded to see that big blue bloom sitting there, just sort of hanging in space. Took me forever to figure out which pot it was in!

If anyone wants any of the purple morning glories, they grow like weeds, just let me know and will pull pants out of ground. J

Nice of you to offer, Hockeyrabbit, but you might get more interest in the Plant and Seed Trading forum than in the Ask a Question forum. @Dave may move this post over there for you so that it's seen by others as well.

Chelle, Greene, Woofie... thank you for the answers. I'll try to plant another Kniola's and Ushio seeds. I'll let you all know how they turn out, or if I have more questions

You're welcome, Rookie.

Good luck and happy gardening!


I found my first bloom of the season yesterday.

And a little motivation:
My scraggly Heavenly Blue and some volunteers left over from the Kniolas Black I planted a couple of years ago:



And Chelle, (hee hee) no fertilizer. Ever.

They look very pretty!

Welcome, Rookie!

I'm always quick to suspect "poor drainage" in a container. It could be that the mix is too heavy, too fine, too water-retentive, or all three.

Whether it is the soiless mix or over-watering, anything that has too much water probably has too little gas exchange, which suffocates the roots - they literally drown. Peat moss is very fine and very water-retentive.

Usually, soil is much too fine for pots, and it ends to compact which is even worse. And manure can be like pudding: it can flow into and completely block any air spaces that managed to exist within the rest of the soil. Clogging the air spaces drowns the roots.

I don't use any soil in pots, just bark, grit and peat-based geometrical potting MIX (not potting SOIL). It's the peat that holds most of the water in my mixes, so I use less than 25% of it.

I don't worry about fertilizer until the plants are big enough that they belong in the ground. Very dilute or none is OK for seedlings until they have, oh, I don't know - 1 or two pairs of real leaves?

I tend to use soluble chemicals when I fertilize pots. I fear that something organic won't have enough time to be digested and released into a pot. There might not even be any soil bacteria and fungi in my pots to break the organic fertilizer down at all!

I can't seem to stop myself from overwatering, so I add a lot of bark nuggets to any mix that I buy. Nuggets almost as large as 1/4" are OK in a BIG pot, but up to 1/10 - 1/8" is better in small pots. Say, 1 or 2 to 5 mm.

If the bark is TOO fine (like powder or fine fibers) it will start to hold as much water and block as much air as peat. Well, not AS bad, but going in the wrong direction. If I get too much dusty powder of fine fibers when I screen bark, I don't add much peaty-mix.

Rick ... it sounds like you are handling container plants very well. One of the things I do that you did not mention is that I always lift the pots from the hardscape to insure good drainage. It doesn't take long for soil in a container to go sour when you use soil.

For my cuttings, I generally use a mix of perlite and vermiculite and no soil. Don't laugh, please, but I also sprinkle the tops of the cutting pots with cinnamon because it seems to prevent fungus issues and damping off.

My native soil in the garden is comprised of glacier slurry which has a LOT of small rocks tightly compressed together. Once I break up the soil for planting, I leave those rocks in the bed because I honestly believe they help with the drainage in my clay soil. I hadn't thought about how they also help with the exchange of gases, Thanks for mentioning it.

Smiles,
Lyn

>> lift the pots from the hardscape to insure good drainage

True! maybe a square of gardware cloth or three layers of window screening. Or thin strips of wood.

If I think the pot is staying too wet, I raise the pot up several inches on something with a pierced or grooved surface and set a strip cotton flannel under one or more drain holes. I drape the flannel down from that surface and let it hang down as much farther as possible. The flannel must touch the soil mix through the drainage hole.

Now capillary attraction PLUS gravity will pull water out of the bottom of the pot and flow it away downhill. Prevent perched water and peat-moss-soup.

I learned that plus my pine bark fetish from Al / Tapla, the Guru of gritty container mixes. But Al teaches that it is better to have really well-draining mix, than to play games with wicks.

And I always remind myself that drainage not only allows water to get out, it allows air to get in. Deep pots probably need side holes in addition to bottom holes (to encourage gas exchange).

>> It doesn't take long for soil in a container to go sour when you use soil.

I agree! Besides getting water-logged, pudding-ed, anaerobic or acidic fermentation, soil can retain too much salt from chemical fertilizers or manure.

With really perfect drainage, each watering can be heavy enough to fill all air spaces for a few seconds, then drain right out the bottom again, leaving behind only a small amount of water. Flush every molecule of old gas out, and drawing new, fresh air back in! Out with the old, in with the new!

My theory is that "Earth Boxes" get away with a puddle of water in the bottom of the pot by having many air holes along the side, PLUS a big air chamber between water level and the colander that supports the soil mix. Air diffuses in and keeps the air chamber fresh, which then keeps all of the soil aerated. (Also, the points of contact between soil mix and water ("wicks") are smallish in a well-designed Earth Box. The number of roots that drown and die each time the water rises is small.

>> I also sprinkle the tops of the cutting pots with cinnamon because it seems to prevent fungus issues and damping off.

I've heard several very experienced seed-starters say the same thing! I lean towards 0.1% or 0.2% hydrogen peroxide, myself, but you are probably right. Why shouldn't a plant evolve so that it's bark prevents fungus from thriving?

I also like a dry surface to deter damping-off, so I use a bark-rich seedling mix that is more coarse than otherwise ideal, I also make sure that the very surface layer has even larger bark chunks. They are always dry!

However, every time a really good gardener gives me advice that works great for her, I have to wonder. Maybe it was all the OTHER things she does right that corrected the problem!

And maybe the cinnamon or eggshells or hydrogen peroxide or pine bark or fairy dust that she THINKS prevents the problem, just happen to be the last thing she added before the year when she perfected her technique in other ways. Now she gives the credit to the fairy dust, when it's really just that her usual habits include doing everything else excellently.

But I try anything that sounds good, and I also give the credit to whatever McGuffin was my most recently added trick. I get enough "science" at work! In my hobby, I'd rather dabble than go to all the effort of controlled experiments.