Harvesting Morning Glory Seed

This is a picture of a volunteer "Dawn Star" morning glory that germinated against the climbing trellis in the big garden this year. It is one of my all-time favorite morning glories and I wanted to see if I could save some seed from it this year.

Some morning glory varieties are better seed producers than other varieties. In my experience, "Grandpa Ott" is a great seed producer while "Heavenly Blue" is not. Back while it was blooming, I wrapped green twist ties around a couple of "Dawn Star" bloom clumps, so I would be sure I was saving the correct seed after the flowers had faded. Of all of the clumps that I marked, only one had set seed. To further complicate things, these pods were still fairly green. Since a lot of rain was in the forecast, I clipped off theses three pods and brought them inside to dry on a paper towel. Hopefully the seed is fully mature and will germinate in the Spring.

I also wanted to save seed from my monster "Mixed Colors" Pink morning glory that was growing up in my kitchen garden. It smothered the support tower this year and was covered in beautiful two-tone pink flowers all Summer long.

I had literally hundreds of seed pods from which to harvest on this plant. It definitely falls into the category of "awesome seed producer". I would say over 2/3 of the pods had already dried and were just starting to split open. Each pod contains four shiny, black seeds.

When I was finished I had a small plastic container half filled with seed. I will have plenty of seed to start plants for myself and to share with others. If you save morning glory seed, be sure to keep it out of reach of children and pets. It is highly toxic.