Hello, I am interested in your Honeyvine Milkweed Vine. I have these from your want list. Red Lobelia Hollyhock Penstemon Trumpet Vine Cypress Vine Cardinal Climber Passionflower Vines Moonvine necklace pod Please let me know, Faye!

I'm a huge milkweed fan, and would like to get a better description of the vine you mentioned "Morrenia odorata". Even better would be a photo. There are other Cynanchum vines than the Laeve species. I'm only familiar with the Cynanchum Laeve and don't know if any of the other species in the genus has fuzz. It would not surprise me, since the species in the genus Asclepias that I'm collecting vary greatly in the amount of fuzziness their leaves have, some none at all, one completely covered.

My experience with A. curassavica and A. tuberosa has led me to change from transplanting seed-grown plants to raking seed directly into the garden, pressing down the seed bed afterward by walking on it to ensure good seed-soil contact, and then watering in the planting. Seeds I sowed in Houston around 3 weeks ago are up, and the record early snow and freeze yesterday did not bother the seedlings a bit, although some tall adult plants that were in the open froze back. I suspect staying low over the winter may help the seedling survive by staying close to the residual warmth of the earth. I also have many seedlings of Centaurea americana that re-seeded from summer 2009 which have formed small foliage rosettes hugging the ground. Other wildseed from Native American Seed Co. in Junction, TX that I raked in a month ago has also sprouted in the same ground-hugging fashion. So you might want to try winter sowing, at least with respect to native milkweeds and other plants of your region. The world has been in a serious icehouse condition for the last 1.8 million years, so native plants have had to adapt to winter by going through cold dormancy, seeding in the spring with quick-sprouting and -growing seeds, or by hanging on as seedlings during the winter in warmer but still periodically chilly climes such as prevail down here in Zone 9.

In my experience, milkweed is difficult to transplant, even from a pot. They seem to be very temperamental about having their roots messed with, which is odd since it is sometimes considered a hard plant to get rid of. With the plants from the big box stores, I would just sink the pot into the ground and let the plant reseed itself. Growing from seed, I keep mine in a shaded location every time I pot them up and I try to get to them before they become any kind of root-bound so that I don't disturb their roots while repotting. Right now I have about a dozen each of prairie and whorled milkweeds that I recently potted up from cells to 4" pots. I lost one of those to transplant shock. The next pot-up will be straight into their places in the garden where I will be sure to water daily and also screen (but not block out completely) from much of the sunlight until I'm sure they've taken. A better way to go might be to get the 4" peat pots and sow the seeds directly into those and then drop the pot into place when it's of good size. Once you get a plant or two to go to seed, they will reseed themselves quite happily around your yard and seem to do a far better job than we do.