I have planted some Morning Glory plants against a trellis and they are rapidly climbing. However, it seems to be a single tendril going up. Will the plant naturally send up offshots that will more broadly cover the trellis, or so I need to do something to encourage it to do so, like nip off the top of the tendril?
TIA
Bernard Golden
IME (which, I will admit, only was 3 years of growing them) it was 'one seed, one plant, one vine.' I don't recall seeing offshoots (more than one tendril) from a single seed (but, then again, I didn't watch them all that closely) and I never attempted pruning the leading portion to attempt to make it branch. The way I got the morning glories to cover the entire area I wanted covered was to plant a bunch of seeds then thin them out if they needed to be.
Tracey
Mine have sent up a second tendril but it is far, far shorter than the original. I think you may want more than one to get the spread you are looking for. I have three and the coverage isn't as thick as I expected. Also the lower leaves tend to shed. I see new leaves starting on many existing vines so I'm hoping they all bush out a little more. I have no flowers yet.
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
1st Year Gardener
They start sending off more shoots further up. You'll want to plant more to fill in the bottom this year.
Next year you won't have this problem ;-)
Janine
I'm growing several plants of 3 varieties, Heavenly Blue, Scarlet Red and Moonflowers (which aren't actually morning glories but very similiar). I'm doing my best to train them up my front porch. I put bamboo stakes in near each plant to give them support to work thier way up to the porch itself. They seem to respond well to this and my best plant (which I've had flowers on daily for a little over a week now) is about 10-12ft tall and has several offshoots. They seemed to do this naturally, once they have achieved sufficient growth of the main vine. They have a tendancy to wrap around one another, which helps to increase the leaf density around the porch. I started these indoors in peat flats, gave them 2 weeks under a lamp and then set them out in soil from along a stream near my house. They seem to enjoy the very high hummus content in this soil.
I am guessing that the more they climb the more likely they will fire out shoots. They curled readily around the stakes providing more overall climbing area...this may have helped. Total I have around 14 plants of the 3 types. Only the heavenly blue has flowered so far.
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