Morning glories are an interesting beast and can tolerate small containers as long as they're watered. As an experiment I let a vine grow in a small 5" pot nestled into a CD-R 50 pack plastic spindle cover. You can see the photo of the pot at: http://www.brandylion.com/images/small-mg-pot.jpg The resulting plant got bigger than I expected with its roots occupying the entire CD-R plastic spindle simply soaking in water. The resultant plant is in the link below. I didn't fertilize this plant at all. However, I think ferilizing helps these plants later in the year when they start getting big and losing their lower leaves. Here is a link that might be useful:

Speaking of the "devil" Dawiff, we where just talking about you and how, because of you moving to the other side of the country, we have about 100 fewer containers outside. PLANT THOSE SEEDS ASAP. IF THEY HAVE SPLIT THEN MAKE A HOLE, I USE A WOODEN CHOPSTICK TO MAKE A HOLE ABOUT 1/4 INCH DEEP, CAREFULLY PUT THE SEED IN THE HOLE AND COVER IT UP. YOU DON'T WANT TO DAMAGE THE BEGINNING ROOT SYSTEM THAT IS STARTING TO DEVELOP. You never want to wait till there are leaves or long roots or anything else coming out of the seed in the water. that will make a huge problem in planting and growing and may rot the seeds. As for how I soak them. I bought a box of those zippy bags, 2x3 inches at AC Moore, when I was on one of my business supply runs a couple of years ago. I use those to soak the seeds in. Since I grow so many MG seeds, it takes me quite a bit of time to label each bag, one at a time and put in the seeds. I use a deco paint pen to label each packet. sharpie washes off when the bag gets wet. I usually soak them for about 12-18 hours, but not more than that. I fill the bags at the sink, 1 at a time, with fairly warm water and zip them closed. They are all standing up in a plastic tray thing so that the seeds are at the bottom of the bag in the water. I usually soak the seeds for several hours after first putting them in the warm water and then take all the packets and one by one, drain out the water in the baggie and fill it again with warm water a second time. Not all the seeds will fall to the bottom. That may indicate that they are not viable seeds, but it doesn't always mean that. Most of the time, the seeds will swell in size, sometimes double and triple the size. Not all of the seeds will, and again that may mean they are not viable and it may not mean that. I sow all of them. If the seeds are mushy, then you no doubt have a problem and the seed isn't going to germinate, but then again, it might be OK. Sometimes the seeds will crack and split, like yours did, and start to send out a root, sometimes they just send a shoot out without really cracking and sometimes they just change color in the water. OR you could have what I had today with the seeds I collected from my heavenly blue last year. Never saw this before, but every one of the seeds swelled in size, cracked open and sent out this green thing of roots. Since you've said that you have to container garden this year, you should put only one seedling in a pot, unless you are using huge, huge, huge pots. I put one seedling in a 10 or 12 inch pot with miracle grow potting mix and there is no way, the pot could handle more than that. Oh those chocolate silk MG seeds. Are they the same kind you gave me a packet of last year to grow? If they are, keep an eye on the true leaves of the seedlings. Remember what happened last year? We got 4 different types of MG from those seeds. You took 2 of them and I kept 2. didn't get any seeds from them though. I just put out today, 4 more seeds from that packet. Will be interesting to see if I get 4 different MG plants this year. Oh, don't be jealous now but we put out all the MG seeds today. You'll be proud of us though, we really did cut back on the number of kinds this year. Instead of 75 different ones, we cut down to 40 different ones. Hope they grow well for you and send me some pics. I already really miss my WS partner. Fran

Mike now I envy YOU! I have a variegated maroon looking MG and I have only found ONE seed pod! I think they do not produce any :-( But yes...next year your fence will be covered by all the seeds that start growing from the ground up lol VERY PRETTY Lucy

Lary check out this site. You can get lots of help with plants for hummingbirds. There is probably someone here who has seeds for these vines and will be glad to share them. Someone is always sending seeds or plants to others. Here is a link that might be useful: Hummingbird Forum