canna

Hello Dreams,
I have one of these which I keep in a pot. It's just in ordinary compost and I give it a dose of M grow every now and again. It blooms well, although yours definitely looks better. Mine is several years old and probably needs a bigger pot. I know they need copious amounts of water and protection from frost. I take mine into the conservatory for the winter, but would be interested to hear whether anyone grows them in the garden and leaves them in all winter .

That's certainly a beauty - I have them outside in a very sheltered spot, but they're nowhere near flowering. I usually pot them up in sand and peat at the end of the summer and place them in the shed or garage for the winter, then the following (Feb/Mar), I turn them out and split them - I usually find one season means its now an enormous clump of corms, then pot them up or put them in the garden. They seem to do better in pots though, and they like a lot of feeding.

They are very hardy and ours have come through the winter (in the ground) after temperatures of minus 20C! What kills the corms/tubers in winter is moisture and they rot. So we lost one by the river and one by the pond but not the ones by the house. (We have a drier climate here than in the UK)
I think growing in the pot is best as you get much earlier flowers, but why not plant out by burying the pot in the border. You can dig it up to keep it dry over winter. Bamboo is right that you can soon make lots of new plants from a single one.

Wish I knew what I've done wrong with mine! They were spectacular in the garden last year - almost a jungle. I took the corms in to the boiler house for winter, split and replanted them outside when the soil had warmed a little - and there they sit in a bare patch - doing absolutely nothing! They're obviously dead - but why I wonder? I shall try again next year with new plants.

Nariz, could it be that yours got dried up too much? I've bought a number of canna corms in garden centres which have never grown as they've been dessicated! Did you store them in slightly moist potting compost or peat?

Hi Bertiefox. No, I stored them dry in a box in the dark with a light covering of paper, just as I had done the winter before - following which they grew gloriously. Maybe one more dry winter was too much for them?