Archive for the 'Cannas' Category

Cannas Are Back

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The cannas I planted in our yard a few years ago are flowering again. We are growing red, yellow, and orange cannas. It’s nice to have perennial flowers like cannas in the garden that don’t need to be replanted every year.

Our cannas have grown back year after year with relatively little care. Cannas need watering every few days during our dry season, when I water them with our automatic micro-spray watering system. They also need to be cut to the ground in the fall after bloom. Although, I haven’t ever fertilized them.

Cannas tend to multiply over time by producing new rhizomes. Although, our cannas haven’t spread very fast, and they haven’t been invasive. One can dig up the rhizomes and separate them every few years. The yellow spotted cannas in the first picture above were given to us by a friend who had too many of them.

In our climate where the soil never freezes, I leave our canna rhizomes in the ground over the winter. They survive our occasional frosts and dips into the 20s F without any damage. However, I have been told that in climates that have much colder winters, the top several inches of soil freezes. In these climates, cannas need to be dug up and stored inside in the winter or planted next to a building where they won’t freeze.

June 28 2009 | Cannas | Comments Off on Cannas Are Back

June Flowers

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I took these pictures in our yard yesterday. In the first picture, our orange tropicanas are just starting to bloom, and a red gladiola is blooming behind them. The second picture shows one of our hydrangeas just beginning to open.

June 08 2009 | Cannas and Gladiolas and Hydrangeas | Comments Off on June Flowers

Canna Display


I have always been fond of cannas.  I am partial to their colorful and asymmetrical flowers as well as their large, tropical-looking leaves.  When I first started growing cannas, I couldn’t get them to bloom.  I later realized that they weren’t blooming, because I wasn’t watering them enough.  

I live in a region that only gets about 15″-20″ of rain per year, and most of that rains falls from November through March.  It hasn’t rained at our house this year since late February.  When I water them at least every few days, cannas grow rapidly and bloom in a few months, even though I never fertilize them.  As soon as they dry out, they stop growing.  They seem to not like having their roots dry out during the growing season.

Because cannas like to be moist, they tend to attract snails.  Snails eat the leaves while the cannas are growing, leaving an unattractive pattern of holes in the leaves.  I haven’t been able to find an effective control for the snail problem.  Putting copper tape around the base of each steam is not really practical, especially because the stems need to be cut to the ground as soon as they finish blooming.  I don’t like to use liquid snail poison or pellets, because they wash away quickly after a watering.  I have been hand picking the snails off the leaves.

I am not sure what these cannas are called.  A friend gave them to us.  

July 19 2008 | Cannas | Comments Off on Canna Display