Here is a picture of the flowers.

Here is a link that might be useful: white Morning glories

Mine do that too. :( Arum

Steph:

I have been growing morning glories for about 7 years now. First thing I will tell you, that I have always had more difficulty getting "heavenly blues" to bloom. They always HAVE bloomed for me, but it just took a long time to get them there. This year, they started earlier than usual, and I planted them much later than usual.

As for the leaves dying at the bottom of the vines, that is normal for just about all morning glories. However, I have found that it tends to happen more frequently with heavenly blues. The vines usually do this for a few reasons. THe lower leaves tend to start getting less sun as the vines grow. Also, the vines are putting all of thier energy in to producing new vine growth at the top where the leaves are going to be much more likely to get full sun and produce more energy for the plant, as well as the plant is putting much more energy into producing blooms which produce seed. Thus, the vines really do not need the lower leaves which it started out growing with, as they become a liablity. Less light recived = less energy produced for the plant, and in turn, the plant "recognises" this and will "shed" its lower leaves so it no longer has to use valuble energy to support the leaves that arent "earning thier keep" so to speak.

There most likely is nothing wrong with your vines at all, it is just a natural function of the plant trying to survie and do so in the most efficient manner possible, and that includes shedding lower leaves that are not producing enough energy for the plant to remain an asset to the plant, but instead have become a liablity as they consume more energy than they produce. make sense?

Sure it may look unsightly to us, but to the plant it is doing the best thing for itself. Ive just learned to live with it. ALL vines in the ipomoea family have this tendancy, but heavenly blues in my experience tend to do it MORE than others.

A good cultivar that doenst seem to do it as much are the purple "grandpa otts". Heres a couple of pics of my vines and flowers:

Wow! Awesome pictures! All of my white ones are blooming, and yesterday I had one, yes just one, Heavenly Blue bloom... but it never reopened this morning.

I have a dumb question for you mr. novaplantguy
How can I post pictures so they appears as your's do, as opposed to having them listed as a link? I'm fairly new to this site and still haven't figured it out yet.
Thanks

Your patio is gorgeous! I like the idea of planting the MGs in window boxes on the ground. how many plants/seeds do you put in each box?

And of course, your plants look awesome!!!

I always plant Zinnias from seed directly in front. By the time the leaves of the MG look bad the Zinnias are up and blooming.

Hey everyone! Thanks for the compliments! They really are appreciated.

Stephyloulou, to answer your question on how to post photos, you have to use the img src= tag. You just paste the URL (the actual web address of your photo) directly after the = sign so your tag should look like this: img src=http://yourURLhere

Directly before the img src= part of the tag you need to place a ... NO SPACES between the Make sense?

Siennact: There are between 6 and 8 plants in each container. Those containers are just the big green (they come in brown and white too) plastic deck containers you find at home depot or lows for about 8 bucks each. Nothing more. Ive been growing them in those containers for years, as I used to live in an apartment on the 14th floor with a balcony. Being that 95% of the "back yard" is a actually a stone patio as you can see, I just applied the same knowledge I gained through container gardening on the balcony, to the patio. Beneath all of those leaves, I hung up "tomato cages" with "U" nails on the fence. That is the support or trellis the vines are growing on. They are the square kind that fold up, just unfolded hanging on the fence. For added support and to make it "fuller" I tied twine half way between each verticle metal part, so as to give the fines more areas to grow up onto, that were close together in order to get the full / total coverage. Since were moving right along towards the late stages of midsummer and on to late summer, the lower sections of the vines are now starting to drop some leaves so they arent quite as full down low as they used to be. The containers are now filled with roots, and I MUST water then VERY thoroughly EVERY day. I also use miracle grow on them once every two to three weeks. This is important, espeically with that many plants in the containers as they are really competeing for nutrients, so im definately not concerend about over fertilising. Ive been doing it for years, and every year I get the same, awesome results you see here. Sorry, not trying to toot my own horn so to speak, just sharing what is tried and true and has always worked for me. Id love to see some photos of others vines/ gardens too!

Share away.... =o)

~ NPG