Morning Glories: Morning Glories 2009 #15, 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
Jackie, Helena, Debra, and James - Lots of gorgeous blooms! Here it is the middle of September and y'all have tons of blooms still. That would be typical in the deep south here in south-central Florida, but most of you live far north of me! I hope y'all get plenty of seeds from your terrific blooms! :-)

I've been hand-pollinating every day before work. Some of my efforts have been paying off as I see nice, big seed pods forming on some of my vines. But ... the Diluted Fuji no Muraski is proving to be a challenge to get pods to form once again. Most of the pods are turning yellow or brown and falling off the vine. Not sure why, because the blooms have been producing lots of pollen. I remember it being discussed before that the self-pollinating of some fancy cultivars make the vines sterile. I am now thinking that may be the issue here. (Much to my utter disappointment!) I thought about trying to cross this cultivar and maybe I still will give that idea a go, but I really liked the blooms/vine just the way it is. So ... it will be interesting to see how many seeds I will actually get from this vine. This is becoming a rare cultivar because of this dilemma and I am rather baffled by this whole situation. But I press on ...

Jackie - I hope you have better luck with yours!!!

I am also seeing that the beautiful Japanese Sazanami and the two solid white NOID vines are NOT producing pods. (Pollen production has stopped on the whites!) The Sazanami is not producing pollen at all. I was crossing it with the white NOIDs, but now that is not possible either. So ... what to do, what to do?

It figures! that some of the most beautiful I am growing currently are sterile. Grrr ...

On the other hand, the smaller blooming vines are still giving me lots of pollen and I see pods all over the vines! :-) Fingers crossed that those pods don't fall off either. The temps here are still very hot. Maybe that is the problem. I am just not sure why this is happening ...

I've got numerous starts that are actually starting to bloom. Need to pot those babies up! LOL! I want to get some "freckled" vines blooming. I am debating whether to grow them indoors or start them in the 5 gallon containers and see what happens. Rust fungus is back. It's that time of year. (sigh) It seems like a mad rush now to get these vines going, blooming, and producing seeds! Fall is just around the corner and we never know whether we will get an early frost or the weather will stay nice until the end of November into December here in this zone of Florida. So the race is on and I am pushing these vines hard! :-)

Here is Diluted Fuji no Muraski.

This message was edited Sep 19, 2009 3:01 PM