Morning glories resent being transplanted. You would have more success soaking the seeds overnight and then planting them in the ground next to the arbor. Once you succeed you will propably never have to start new plants from seed ever again. There are a couple species of perennial morning glory that will return and grow vigorously every year. I grow the perennial Ipomoea pandurata. It's perennial and has large white flowers with marroon throats. I have had success with transplanting pot grown morning glories. The giant Moonflower, Ipomoea alba requires a very long growing season to be able to bloom, so in the past, Ive started them about 8 weeks ahead of time to give them a headstart. When I put them in the ground I had to helicopter watch them, and I shaded them from direct sun and always kept the soil moist, not letting it dry out. Transplants can be done in by direct sun easily, when they are first planted. What type/color of morning glories are you trying to grow?

Ipomoea pandurata, Manroot. perennial. I believe there is another morning glory, Ipomoea lucinosa weaving through the pandurata.

Those are gorgeous!

I’ve been trying to grow Heavenly Blue morning glories. For my second attempt this year, a couple weeks after trying to transplant the sprouts in peet pods to no avail, I did soak the seeds overnight. They had tiny sprouts on them the next morning when i planted them next to the arbor. I watered them and waited with anticipation. Nothing ever came up. So I tried again, maybe two weeks later, letting the sprouts grow for a couple days to almost an inch long before planting them next to the arbor. Nothing ever happened. :( Its been about 3 weeks since planting that third round (5 weeks since planting the second round, and about 8 weeks since planting the sprouts in peet pods) and nothing has grown.

I remember struggling to grow some heavenly blue too. I finally succeeded. I grow the Cypress Vine, Ipomoea quamoclit and a multitude of vollunteers of that species return each year. Im attempting to weed out the majority of mg vollunteers before they engulf all my other plants like kudzu. I have many common purple mg vollunteering as well. Those I'd be happy to eradicate comepletely. I wanted to grow a large flowered red mg, and every time I transplanted one of them into the garden, they would get eaten down to nothing by bugs or voles. The hundreds of vollunteer mg nearby were never touched, only the mg that I wanted to grow. After countless attempts, and some chicken wire barriers, I managed to grow a large red flowered mg to blooming stage and when the flower finally opened it was a regular mg purple. Thank you Burpee! I'm wondering if the quality of the 2023 seeds is poor, because I bought 2 packets of nasturtium seeds a couple weeks ago and still no germination? I hope you have better success with your Heavenly Blue in the next few weeks!

It sounds to me as if the OP never hardened off his plants and they simply burned up. When you start seeds inside, you have slowly accustom the plants to being outside and getting full sun. It can take more than a week of letting them have some sun, then bringing them back inside, then a little more, etc.

I was going to say the same thing - when I grow morning glories, I leave them to set seed and they drop where they are and I have new plants the next year, here in zone 6. Not sure about your zone, but if they are not reliably hardy there, you can collect the seed and plant them the next spring where you want them.

I was just noticing yesterday that after I allowed my raised veggie beds to lay dormant this year, a lot of things reseeded. Borage, everywhere and one corner of a bed has a patch of Borage with morning glories winding around it blooming.

So if you want them at the base of the arbor, put some seed there and you might be surprised at how well they do.

Hardening off might indeed be the answer for Jeff, but not for me! :) I wintersow my seeds, AND tried direct sowing. Still no morning glories for me. Except Grandpa Ott, who scared me lol.

PM2, did you have morning glories in/near your veggie beds previously? Are you sure those "reseeders" aren't bindweed?

:)

Dee

Hi Dee, no not bindweed and yes I had MGlories near my veggie beds and I grew them out front on an obelisk a couple of years ago and they came back there. Not sure if it was Grandpa Ott, but it was a dark purple one.

I started them from seed--even took them on vacation, so they would not dry out. They looked fine and the advice I read said to get them into the garden before they got too big. Every one of them died after I put them in the ground. When I have bought plants at the nursery, they have lived, but they have been quite sparse. The first time I ever planted them, I fed them. The vines went CRAZY! They covered the railing of the deck and almost swallowed the house (well, not really). They didn't flower until the end of September. I read after that that feeding them is a bad thing, because it (as I found out) encourages lots of green growth and delayed flowering. Well, in the current house, I have had had very paltry vines (although they do flower for a long while, but only one or two blooms at a time). So, those people who say they self-seed and take over the yard? Yeah--not here they don't.

VioletSnapdragon - Everyone's garden is different. You soil is different, the amount of sun is different, weather is often different and the gardener is different. [g] Of course, when we are trying to have the same results of someone who has been successful, that's what we do, try to line up what is the same. You do the best you can to duplicate what someone else did.

If you would like to have better performance from Morning Glories, I'd keep trying. I'm not an expert, I don't actually try. They are sort of an afterthought for me. I'm not sure if they do better with full sun or part sun. I have grown many different varieties because I went on a seed trading obsession with Morning Glory seed for a couple of years. Some morning glories for me bloomed eariler than others. No, it was over a decade ago, so I don't remember, which one. I probably roughed up the seed and soaked overnight and then planted in the ground. I didn't start them ahead of time. I'm not sure what they prefer, clay soil or sandy soil.

I'm sure there is some kind of a 'formula' for growing them well. Even a google search should come up with a lot of information. Sounds like people who direct seed get the best results. Not sure what you used for fertilizer, but if it was a commercial synthetic fertlizer, that might have been too strong. You could try compost or seaweed extract one time after they just get going to try to get a fuller vine and earlier bloom.

Many garden plants are like that. Other people have success and you think, why is this not easy in my garden? You put a little more effort in if you really want it and sometimes you solve the puzzle and you have the success you want, but not always. If not, then you keep trying what you love and when you see some things that just love your garden, then you grow more of those. Hopefully some of the plants you love the best do well and you are a happy gardener.

Being in California with almost no frost, ours are a given! Our lawn guy tries to get rid of them, but I love them!

I grew the common dark purple one, which I believe is the Grandpa Ott previously mentioned, and yes, that thing self seeds to no end. Thankfully I can easily tell the seedlings and keep them in check. I usually plant tomatoes in the planters and do like the morning glories twisting around the vines. But I definitely remove the majority of the seedlings. If I ever wanted to get rid of them completely, I’d have to go on a very determined mission to remove every seedling which I know is ready to emerge.