Harvesting MG Seed Question

[Mark Anderson]

I've been cleaning up the rooftop garden clearing out all the dying plants and preparing the soil in containers for planting wildflower seed later this fall after the ground freezes. It still has been relatively warm here in Zone 5 Chicago.

This year I grew a lot of morning glories that grew over a system of trellises I built early last Spring. I want to harvest the seed to plant in other areas but many of the morning glories vines are still alive and the seed pods, although closed, are still green and it appears the seeds are still forming inside. Is it OK to just harvest these green pods and place them in a coffee can and let them dry out? Will the seeds form if they get separated from the mother vine? I'd really like to clean out the vines if possible. The problem I see with waiting until the seeds form in the pods is that there is a small window of opportunity to harvest before the pods break open and the seeds blow away. It would be very convenient if I could harvest all the seed pods all at once and be done with it. Does anyone have insight on this?

[starlord]

A wayward dirt biker ran headlong into my small MG wall,( a wire sention help up by poles ) and tore the plants out. I put all the plants into a rubbmain tub and let dry. The seed pods that where close to being rip did turn brown and dry out and have good seeds. The green pods never fully turned rip and as a test, their seeds floated, which is not a good sign. If you can at lest wait until the first good frost hits, then you'll have lots of seeds, otherwise all you can do is like what I'm doing, I have one MG vine out on a wall that went to seed real late, and everyday I go out and find pods ready and pick them leaving the green ones to ripen.

Morning Glory List Operator.

[Frogleg]

The best time to harvest seeds is when they're fully mature and ready to drop/fly away on their own. At that time, they've gathered all they need from the plant (food, money, George Foreman grill) and are prepared to set out on their own (except for phone calls for more money).

Some probably will.

Life would be much easier if everything happened at "convenient" times. In my experience, this seldom occurs. It would be convenient if daffodil foliage died back immediately after the blooms were done, instead of becoming gradually rattier-looking for weeks. Assuming your morning glories have been blooming all along, there should be plenty of seed pods of sufficient maturity now. If you clean up the vines, you'll probably find hundreds of seeds ready to disperse. Save those.