My 2008 Ipomoea (and other vines) Garden

Granted, they are still in the seedling stage, but I did get this bloom the other day . . . the Aomurasakizyouhatensibori vine is all of 4" so far.

Here are the Wedding Bells . . .

Heian no Izumi - I've noticed on these that the cotyledons vary. Out of 4 seedlings, one set is green, two are variegated, and one is almost white.

Looking forward to Dracula!

I just love the leaves on the I. wrightii . . .

Oooh, oooh, oooh! Can't wait to see the blooms! I have seeds for some of those too and will be planting them as soon as I finish my back patio project this weekend!

Don't ya just love a new year of gardening and all the possibilites?!!!

They look very healthy.. great job there. , just want to let you know that Dracula grows very slow, as all the other playtcodons.. our patience is tested to the limit with these..lol also, they are heavy bloombooster feeders in order to get the most blooms.

Becky - do you have seeds for Dracula or I. wrightii - or both?

I know what you mean about patience, A! Here is a White/Red speckled kikyo platycodon, that I think is a few weeks old, and is all of maybe 2"!

This message was edited Mar 22, 2008 3:48 PM

mine are just a little bigger, the seeds went in 2/25 and they are starting to vine now but are very stiff like going up. But still only inches tall, a couple may be 7 inches tall, that is what I wanted so that I could keep them inside for a couple of months, although, I already started giving them fish emulsion and sprayed them all with messenger twice..lol. We will get blooms really quick, but, they are very short plants...lol.. I have been thinking about putting some into baskets too, just to see how they do, but, I really would rather have them go up, they are more of twiners than they are climbers you have to help them stay put and use ties on them. I've used several types of ties, from yarn pieces to straws and veggies ties.. the straws I found this year are working fantastic, they are the huge straws that your pinky finger fits into.. I love them.

I SOOO wilsh I had digital cam,. 35 is soooo slow, all 24 shots makes me wanna blwo half the roll to get in on this post, aaaaaargh...Syrumani, i will have to follow these and see where they go, mine will start vining tomorrow for sure, although mine are less exotic...just am putting in some nice picotee 'hige' tomorrow AM...cannot wait to watch. all my seedling shots are in the photo developers...
have fun!!!!!
fernman23

Gourd, I might steal your straw idea to differentiate from vines I planted and volunteers. Then I can weed the pot and know which ones belong there.

Karen

fernman23 - I'm looking forward to your pictures!

fernman,
You'll be having lots of film developing, these flowers are so addicting too.

These straws are saving me right now...

Syrumani, do you mind if I post some photos of the straws on your thread, I don't want to hijack it.

Syrumani, If you think of it as a two week old baby then you won`t expect too much. LOL!

We need more pictures and fernman` s are anticipated for sure.

Karen

Gourd, go ahead - I don't mind.

Well, I wouldn't expect much of a 2 week old baby, that's for sure. However, this one has a life span of 8-9 months, so it better hurry up! lol

Oh, wait . . . this is the season for patience . . . deep breath . . . exhale . . . repeat as necessary

Thank you,, here are a couple of straws, the purple one is the larger one and I got lucky and found almost 50 of them at the Goodwill..of all places.. but they are big.. You cut it right down the middle with the scissors.. to make a slit, that way when you cut the bands, they can expand on the vine as the vine grows, it will expand with it...

here you see where I cut it into sections.. these particular straws are very thin and flimsy, I have no idea what they could have been used for, but they are really nice and flexible.. only take a split of a second to put onto the vine and bamboo.

this just shows how much bigger this purple straw is compared to a regular one from those take out drinks. The regular ones can be used too, but they are so much firmer and are harder to put on the bamboo sticks... I keep dropping the darn things, sometimes my fingertips are numb and I cannot feel them.

Here are some of the plants, these are I. nils already about three feet tall or more.. I had to start using them already. What's kinda neat about the straws, is that you can use different colors for different colored flowers, seedpods you want to mark, especially if you find that you have two different colors in your pots and you want to mark them to separate them.. it really worked well for me last year and you can just toss them out when the plant dies down. They are so affordable.. I love it.

here you can see where it expands on my finger the fatter my finger gets..

don't laugh, but, some of the better straws and wider are at Sonic..lol I'm always looking for things like this and my DH is already used to it..

Cool idea using the plastic straws, Antoinette!

Cool idea! I might use that myself! Thanks for sharing your method of separating vines!

I used some red straws last year to mark some flowers. Problem was . . . I was marking red flowers . . . kinda had trouble finding them again!

Sonic, huh? May just have to go out for lunch next week!

Thank you Joseph,

The neat thing is you can just place them at the flower stem and after that the pod will form you dont' have to worry about it anymore, till harvest time if you are only marking for pods.

I use them to also just hold up the vine, the twisty ties sometimes take longer than I want, but I use them too. Whatever I have handy.. I've used those small orange flourescent price tags too, for crosses, they are easy to write on and have a string that fits right over the flower you crossed. I can spot them a mile away..lol heck, you can spot the white tags too. It begins to look a little strange after a few weeks of hanging tags, they look like mini christmas tree decorations. Be sure not to use the gel pens, cuz that ink gets wet and runs, you wont be able to read what you crossed the flower with. I learned that the hard way.. now I'll keep some plain black ink on hand.

You'll find the cut straws at the end of the vine's cycle, when you collect the seeds, so write down what color you put on which pod if that is how you are marking them..

A.

hey, the little square from loaves of bread can work, they are great for writing on with a sharpie! that was a light bulb. (if that is not wat you meant gourd, when you said orange price tags? The ones i mean are almost always a light colour...
:D