[gardeners] Morning Glories and frost
Liz Albrook (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Tue, 21 Oct 1997 14:13:34 +0000
We had our first real frost here yesterday. Cheska the WonderBeagle
ran out, did her business and came right back in. Big Boy and Momma
Cat just looked out the door, saw the frost and crawled back into bed
with me. At least this is what my NGP who is up early told me, I was
asleep at the time.
Surprise, surprise, we lost only 1 tomato plant, a couple of peppers
and no eggplants. It looks like it takes a pretty hard frost to take
out these plants if they don't get hit by the sun while the frost is
still on them. Has anyone else noticed this? The 3 plants I lost
were located so they get very early morning sun.
I planted morning glories along the west of the house this spring. I
planted the Scarlett O'Hara variety (which is supposed to be red but
is really an intense, med-dark pink) and the standard sky blues.
They have really lived up to the glory part of their name. The SO'Hs
are a good deal smaller than the standard blue flowers, but the vines
grew more quickly and bloomed earlier. For the first couple of
months the only flowers we saw were pink and for the last couple of
months the blues have taken off. Now almost all we see are blue
blossoms. Since they are on the west side of the house, out of the
sun until noon, they tend to stay open a bit longer and now that it's
cool they are open most of the day. Don't know if that's a daylength
effect or a result of temperature.
When I lived in the south I didn't dare plant morning glories because
they were so bad about reseeding. Here in dry Idaho I've watch for a
few years as people have grown the vines without having the vines
reseed everywhere so I took the chance. Even if I have morning
glories everywhere next year I can say it will be worth it for the
show we've gotten this year.
Did you guys have anything that unexpectedly knocked your socks off
this year? Tell us about it!
Liz