You probably aren't too late to see a few blooms, but a warning that like all morning glory family plants, it is apt to become weedy.

What would help keep it controlled and groomed? Just general maintaing or anything special?

Ipomoea quamoclit can be easily maintained if grown in a container and -placed in a strategic position as this will insure that you can train the growth as you see fit and control the spread of any seeds.

The seeds can be controlled by surrounding the ground area around the plant container with a piece of thick plastic and raise the edges of the periphery with rocks or wood...this will act as a seed catcher and you can either save or discard the seeds.

Plants grown in containers on hard surfaces makes it easier to sweep up many of the seeds , thereby reducing any volunteers and regardless of the species , if you cut the stem below the cotyledons , NO MG species will survive.

You can also deadhead the flowers and clip off the seedpods before they shed any seeds.

I take issue with anyone who proclaims that all Morning Glories are invasive or weedy , as this is most often based on a lack of familiarity with the many different species within the Morning Glory Family of Conviolvulaceae.

I will pose an example of this type of tunnel vision over-generalization as follows :

"I tried a couple of MG types where I live and I didn't like their behavior, therefore ALL MG's are invasive and weedy"

Over-generalizations are unscientific , inaccurate and misleading .

There are several THOUSAND different species of Morning Glories and quite frankly, most people do not know how to accurately identify even ONE species out of several thousand , don't really know what species they have or have not grown, so therefore people making statements that ALL MG's are invasive or weedy reflects insufficient knowledge of the plants.

The choice of species is important because there are species which require constant moisture (Ipomoea sagittata) otherwise they die back temporarily or die completely.

There are species which require that the growing medium around the main root be kept dry (Ipomoea platensis) , otherwise the main root will decay.

There are species which will NOT survive a cold wet Autumn or Spring (Ipomoea tricolor) , because the seeds imbibe water and burst , killing the seeds , which would also be the case for many of the tropical species which have never had the evolutionary time required to develop mechanisms to enable them to survive in the cooler zones.

The Ipomoea nil which produce double flowers (annuals which do not spread by the roots) can be grown in most climates if provided with enough water and produce few seeds and the few seeds that may be produced are easily collected and any volunteers will be few making pulling the seedlings out relatively simple.

Please be aware that it is Important not to lump ALL Morning Glories into a group like "ALL are Bindweeds" or ALL are invasive" All are Weeds" , because these are MYTHS created by extrapolating the behavior of some onto ALL . based on lack of familiarity with the many DIFFERENT species and the growth and other behavioral characteristics

A google search on MG's will yield results containing much disinformation due to many sites simply parroting what they find on other sites which evidence being 'dumbed down'.

There are species and cultivars that can be enjoyed by many without any problems , but due to the fact that truly accurate information on MG species and cultivars is lacking , you might want to consider joining a group devoted to Morning Glories where the members really know about the different species and can offer you objectively accurate information.

Here are some posts where I shared previously about different species and suitability and although not intended to be complete but to serve as a general reference- copy and paste urls into address bar and hit enter
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0205582329714.html

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0910161412857.html

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0314525119996.html?3

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/gal0811551022489.html?4

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0408234232528.html?6

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0412022622357.html?8

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0608422022955.html?9

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0710415210922.html

There are other MYTHS about Morning Glories e.g., regarding fertilizers, transplanting ,tests for viability, hybrids, toxicity and others which I will not elaborate upon at this point , but suffice it to say that the myths are usually either almost totally inaccurate or in some cases they are totally inaccurate and generated / perpetuated by over-generalizations.

I hope some of what I posted will be helpful to some when they consider enjoying various Morning Glories.

regards,

Ron

I suppose I should be sorry for touching a nerve. But the fact is, the reason many non-Ipomaea smitten gardeners do not grow them, is because of their tendency to self-sow. Nothing to be ashamed about, a lot of plants have this problem, it's just a matter of how serious the problem becomes and whether you consider the plant's worthiness to outweight the annoyance.

Ron, maybe you can answer a question. I read some accounts of 'Heavenly Blue' being sterile, but some report it is not. Even stranger, there are seed merchants selling seeds of it! Well, no one sells seeds of Camellia 'Destiny' as Camellia 'Destiny'. A clone is a clone and that's that. So, apparently the name of 'Heavenly Blue' has been degraded from a cultivar to a seed strain. In that case can you recommend a source for the true, sterile 'Heavenly Blue'? Are there any other sterile morning glories? For that matter feel free to recommend your "top 3 varieties that are not sterile, but unlikely to self seed in normal conditions". For example when you say this: "There are species which will NOT survive a cold wet Autumn or Spring (Ipomoea tricolor)" it seems like you are hedging your bets. Are you saying if I plant this vine in spring, even though it will bloom all summer I will not have a problem with seedlings around and under it? It's very windy here, I cannot possibly gather every seed that might germinate. The people who owned this house ten years ago had (probably bog standard) morning glories in one small area only, thankfully. 10 years later I still pull up around 5-10 seedlings a year, down from scores.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 11:38

OK I found this thread:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0910161412857.html

Which seems to be the main one addressing non-weedy morning glories. Surely these can be rooted though? Seems like many offering seeds is just inviting the possibility of cross contamination with species whose seeds have better viability, and the eventual artificial selection of something that is likely to be weedier.

I love the appearance of Ipomoea quamoclit. I've removed hundreds of tiny seedlings - very easy to ID - and have put up a stick of bamboo for the one I want to grow.

Gave to a friend years ago. She had it in full sun and that crazy vine climbed to the top of a utility pole and was very full the entire length.

Enjoy it! Think you will.
.

Answers to questions posed in this thread and other questions posted to the following related thread here:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/vines/msg0910161412857.html?10

Here is a link that might be useful: Questions and answers related to various Morning Glories & self-sowing