Heavenly Blue Morning Glories catch late afternoon sun today. After the rain last night these vines decided they’re still alive and bloomed. The Heavenly Blues are scattered across all the veranda pergolas today.
Tag Archives: morning glories
Heavenly Blue Morning Glories
Heavenly Blue morning glories bloom on veranda level. Veranda level MGs doing well. Alley level; not so well. I am considering eliminating alley level planters next Spring due to difficulty in maintenance (i.e. watering) and their lack of performance these last bunch of years. The veranda level produced nice MGs this year for a change.
Morning Glories
Purple morning glories bloom on veranda level. Heavenly blues haven’t bloomed yet but I think I saw a bunch survive. Not sure where they are now. Haven’t seen any moonflowers yet. Shot taken on 8/15/2013 in morning light.
Alley Vines
Something is wrong with alley vines. They aren’t growing and some of them look dead. Not sure if it’s watering related or what. From my finger tests it seems the soaker hose gets to the entire planter. Nothing I can do but wait and see. This year I let them grow on their own. Maybe that’s a problem. The soil might need to be regurgitated next spring — I don’t know. Don’t really want to add another project to next Spring. There could also be some dust in the air from the water project on Palmer that has drifted into their soil stunting their growth. It’s a mystery now. We’ll see how they are in a month when they should be at their peak. The Veranda vines are doing very well and increasing the size of west wall boxes has helped.
The SE corner sunflowers had another drooping session on 7/28. It wasn’t even that warm out and they ran out of water after I watered them the night before. Watering is a big problem with these sunflowers in containers and I don’t think that 2’x4’x1.5′ = 12 cu.ft. is big enough to hold all those sunflowers (~12). May need to look into going 2′ high on containers in the future. The edge of the roof line can hold more weight since the weight the underlying beams can hold relates to its sheer strength which can be rather large. Don’t want to overdo it however but I thing 2 cu. ft. / square foot roof area = 200 lbs can be supported by the current joists. Harvested 4 Ichiban eggplants (the skinny ones). Those plants look smaller than last year — most likely due to sharing space with a sunflower. I didn’t expect these sunflowers to grow so big based upon what the seeds said on the package.
Tomatoes look OK. Some Celebrities look a bit stunted. First wave harvest still a couple weeks away. The Brandywines and Big Boys look healthy. Noticed a bunch of volunteer habeneros mixed into a couple of tomato plants. Never had this happen before. They are small because habenero seeds take a very long time to germinate. All this potting mix moves around from year to year so eventually a hab seedling was bound to emerge. Ironic since the purchased hab seedlngs have struggled this year, so much so that these little sprouts may actually produce more habs by the end of September.
Update 7/29: After checking the soaker hoses tonight I don’t think the far south planter is getting enough water. The soaker hoses seem to be distributing water unevenly.
Veranda west wall center box
The center box on west wall veranda level is new this year. It’s about 9 cu. ft. of root space. This spot used to hold 2 3 cu. ft. containers. Making one big container increased root space by 50%. The vines are doing extremely well this year in general and this box in particular. Much of this might have to do with the continuous wet and cool weather we have had this season so far.
Heavenly Blue Morning Glories
Heavenly blue morning glory in late afternoon light. I had to seed these in order to get them to grow. The morning glories look awful this year which is why there aren’t many pics of them up. Although they were all planted in mushroom compost based potting mix, I don’t think that was the problem. My theory is too many hot days above 90F (this year more than broke the all time record) which resulted in lack of watering. Keeping up with the watering regime was brutal this year and I think that caused the MGs to thin out very early. They even looked bad at the end of August which is when they should be in their prime. The only way to fix this is to install drip irrigation. This has to be installed next spring because watering this garden is too much by the end of summer. I already gave up this year and am waiting for the first frost to kill everything and be done with it.
Update on tomatoes: I’m sick of watering and let the main roof go. I think there are red tomatoes up there because squirrels have been throwing them off the roof onto the sidewalk below. Not so interested in harvesting anymore. Maybe I’ll get a bucket full of red habs and see if I can fill the dehydrator one last time this year.
NW corner veranda
Status update of northwest corner veranda. Morning glories have topped the pergolas and this is about as dense as they get. The morning glories are waning. I haven’t seen a Heavenly Blue or Moonflower so it looks like the purple and pinks took over and won. The morning glories seem much thinner than previous years.
Note to future Mark: veranda level container mix needs to be turned and planted with more variety next Spring and then weeded properly. It might be a good idea to introduce mushroom compost as well to aid in water retention and provide better nutrition. I think veranda level boxes drained and dried out too quickly this year. This seems counter intuitive since I didn’t turn or touch the container mix in the veranda main boxes. Perhaps there also might have been lack of proper nutrients provided in both alley and veranda level main planters. No added slow release ferts were added in Spring and MG soluble fertilization was added infrequently. Need to come up with a proper proportion of compost/cubic foot. A 10% ratio would mean 3 cubic feet of compost to cover two veranda level main boxes.
The purples, which I consider the weed of the MG family, is all I got this year. They look nice in certain light but can’t compare to Heavenly Blues which are absent.
Alley vines
Here’s a quick pic of the morning glory vines in the alley that connect with the veranda level morning glories. In past years I seeded the alley planters with vines other than morning glories — like moonflowers. This year I just let them grow on their own so we’ll see if any moonflowers made it.
Note to future Mark: Alley container#4 needs to be rebuilt before 2012 growing season. Potting mix on all alley containers last changed spring 2009 (I think).
Purple Morning Glory
Purple and pink morning glories are usually the first to bloom. The Heavenly Blues bloom later but are more rare and have problems competing. Most years I seed Heavenly Blues to give them some help to even out the odds. This year I did nothing so we’ll see if any Heavenly Blues make it.
MGs top SW veranda corner pergola
By the end of July Morning Glories top the pergolas and start to pile up. By the end of August they will amass quite a bit of greenery. These pictures show the calm before the deluge of greenery occurs in the upcoming weeks.
