12/02/2018 - Recap and plans for 2018

Last year due to incessantly cold weather the Ipomoea nil blooming season was somewhat of a letdown. But after that somewhat abrupt end to last season it's time again to start planning for this coming season. But before we do that here's a quick recap of the last few seasons and some early plans for 2018.

2015:

My first time growing Morning Glories. Planted 8 varieties of I. purpurea (and some mixed seed), 3 varieties of I. tricolor and 1 variety of I. nil. Also planted 3 varieties of I. quamoclit but those unexpectedly died after a transplant. The I. purpurea and I. tricolor did great but the I. nil did not bloom (it did during the winter though). I harvested plenty of I. purpurea seeds but hardly any I. tricolor seeds managed to ripen. I also experimented with growing some small I. tricolor specimens indoors during the winter.

2016:

Planted almost exclusively I. nil (11 varieties). Had just one or two I. tricolor Flying Saucers which I almost forgot I planted until they started flowering in the seed tray. The I. nil flowered relatively well except for one or two varieties. Only a few of them produced a handful of seeds though and I was lucky to harvest only a couple of some of the others.

2017: 14 varieties of Ipomoea nil, 11 varieties of Ipomoea purpurea and 3 varieties of Ipomoea quamoclit were on the list this year. I also added 5 more varieties of I. tricolor late in the season. We had an exceptionally warm growing season in 2017 (in contrast to an exceptionally wet and cold one in 2016). The plants got very large quite fast and the I. purpurea and I. quamoclit flowered really well. The blooming season for I. nil starts later though and just around the time I started seeing the first flowers temperatures dropped severely. The weather never really recovered until the end of the season and the I. nil had a very tough blooming season. I managed to harvest a reasonable amount of I. purpurea seeds but zero I. nil seeds.

2018: The last two years Ipomoea nil has been my main project. However I'm starting to realize it's not that easy to get good results in the Belgian climate (especially when it comes to seed production). I will need to start experimenting with forced flowering to try and ensure at least a small seed crop. In the meantime I will be focusing a lot more on Ipomoea purpurea and Ipomoea tricolor. I will be growing all the varieties I can get my hands on and I also have a large amount of mixed openly pollinated for variety hunting. In addition I'll probably try a couple of species I haven't grown before. Ipomoea hederacea, Ipomoea hederifolia,Ipomoea slotheri and Ipomoea obscura are a couple of likely candidates.

300 grams of mixed Ipomoea purpurea seeds