My whole vine and trellis snapped in two!!

I can't believe it! We just had a quick thunderstorm with wind, and the vine snapped in half. It's ruined. Just as it was getting ready to bloom its heart out. :-(

rev..i am so sorry....i SO didn't think you had the wind like us...but sound like you do....

Thanks, sticks. We sure do. I guess the weight of the vines was too heavy for the wind. Here's a pic of what it looked like last week.

rev - Is it possible that the lower half of the vines will still put out some buds and bloom? I hope so! What a huge vine! So sorry to see what happened. {{{bummer}}}

I think I underestimated the ones I am growing in a container. LOL!

Can't you weave some bamboo canes through the trellis of the top part and then insert the lower part of the canes into the lower part of the trellis? That way the support would be there...hopefully the vines were not too damaged by the flapping broken trellis.

Joseph

rev, I think a lot of us are watching your thread with our hearts in our mouths - it would take a lot less pouffery to lay some of our props low. Very sorry your vine got trounced.

I've noticed that the "dwarf" "vines" of Sun Smile (from Jung Seeds), Good Morning and Kawaii make low mounds for a few weeks, then extend trailers that might fill out the space you've given yours without hulking up so big. An F2 cross from a Kikyou strain of MG by Gardener2005 in our garden also looks like it would fill out a little more than the foregoing without tempting a mischievous wind so much.

just thoughts - nothing so magnificent as what yours was fixing to be

Ah ha! Well, duh....... One of my vines snapped off at the top and I stuck it in a vase of water. It's growing nicely! LOL I will try feeding it some Bloom Booster fertilizer to see if I can get it to bloom in water. No roots, just the main stem. I didn't think it would survive, but low and behold the vine is looking good! LOL!

Maybe you could try growing them in a water vase to get them to bloom and make seed pods (if you were hoping to save seeds from it). Just a thought,.

There's at least 2 things that would be great to do with pieces of your vine and water, which I learned from Ron last fall when frost was imminent and mature pods were not eminent (my favorite word play in a line by Niles' character in Frasier).

In both cases, the water should be changed daily (but I successfully ripened seeds on stems in water last fall after frost by less frequent changes of water - not recommended). To prevent slime from forming, I added a tad (1/2 tsp?) of hydrogen peroxide (H202 - food grade around 3% strength) to each glass or jar of water.

1) You can root cuttings of the vine in water - choose tips that are not forming buds or flowers yet, if possible.

2) Those pods that are far enough along will ripen in water, as discussed above.

This message was edited Sep 2, 2007 10:01 PM

Oh Rev, what a shame. I hope you can salvage something...it was so beautiful, too!

Good luck with it.

Joanne

Thanks everyone for your good wishes and sympathy. It helps!

Joseph, I think that's a good idea. I'm going to try it tomorrow. None of the vines was hurt, they're all still intact with a lot of buds for tomorrow. But they'll be looking for the sun in a new place.

If I have to cut the vines down it's too late in the season for them to grow much, and probably not buds. We usually have our first frost this month. But I could put some of them in water. I do have seeds on the bottom part, but now I won't know which ones are which.

Fortunately I have one more vine on another trellis in a different place. Maybe that one will put buds out soon. It was a volunteer from last year's Wine & Roses.

Iknow what you mean Rev.. as soon as you leave the ground you're up in another type of air.. looks like a perfect spot to construct a new trellis into the old one ..I'd stick a few 1" bamboo poles along side of your railing supports.. and attach them to the steel in maybe three places with the plastic cable ties... from the electrical department..then hold your old one aganst the new pices and attach them with the cable ties also... bamboo is lovely.. as you'd need a larger section of either caedar or redwood to carry the same resistance to breakage ..
your full trellis was like a sail.. it was so solid solid... your lush well cared for vines... the weight of the wind... bent then snapped it..a victim of your own success...
Gordon

Thanks for the good idea, Gordon. I thought about doing something to shore up the vines, then realized we could have frost this month. So I decided to just leave them as is. It seems to be doing pretty well despite what happened. Here they are today.

This is as good as I could get it from the front. But I think they're doing pretty well!

They are looking good!!!