Friday, February 1, 2008

Morning Glories : Desparately Waiting for Spring

Is it time to plant seeds yet!? The hills are all dappled with patches of white melting snow and baren, tan sand and little islands of dry sage. The wild winds overturned semi-truck trailers this week, plastered all fashion of trash and tumble weed skelletons against the chain-link fences, and announced in no uncertain terms that Winter Was Here To Stay For a While.
Haven't actually gotten any morning glories to grow to the point of flowering, yet. First, the seeds have a hard time germinating in our dry desert environment. Then those that do germinate have a difficult time shedding their seed coats with out help - again, due to the dryness. Finally, those that make it to their first true set of leaves get mowed down by hungry ground squirls. This year I am going to try starting them indoors in large, biodegradable pots (12 " or more in diameter). Since they don't like their roots disturbed, I'll plant them out, pot and all, when the night time temps are reliably over 40*F. Maybe I'll get lucky. I love morning glories - I've about a dozen types of morning glory seeds just ready to cover some chain link fencing!

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