A Little Glory For Morning Glories

By Phran Novelli

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Whoops! My tomato plant needed staking, but I was away so I didn't notice, when a morning glory kindly stepped in to stop it from falling over.

Some morning glories can be very weedy, and the ones in my garden are certainly 'volunteers', I never planted them. To enjoy some flowers from them each summer but limit their numbers, I let a few of them sprout each spring and weed out the rest. Then at this time of year, I yank out most of the vines before they can go to seed so I don't end up with thousands more of them next year.

Morning glories will climb just about anything – a trellis, downspout, a bit of string, wire, or a nearby shrub. So it was a handy coincidence that one morning glory vine found its way to the pot with my tomato plants and gently wound around the tomato stem hugging it to the pole I'd put in the pot but neglected to tie the plant against. It did the job I'd forgotten to do, and kept a big branch of fresh juicy tomatoes from dropping to the ground where they certainly would have become squirrel snacks.