Overwintering canna VIDEO

[Yorkshire Kris]

Overwintering Cannas

[Ian Cooke]

Thanks Kris for another video. I do have some comments to add.

You qualify washing off the roots for cleanliness but really that provides a lot of additional disturbance that is likely to lead to rot. Clumps are far better lifted and left with the soil or compost attached overwinter - minimal disturbance - minimal damage!

Again - sand is clean but the point of packing them in something is to keep them moist and sand does not hold moisture. Peat or old compost is much better. Apart for frost damage the greatest risk to canna rhizomes overwinter is dehydration. Most people desiccate them and they die. they must be kept just moist over winter which means some very light damping over which i don't think you mentioned.

When mulching and leaving outside a loose open mulch is much better then soil - needs to have air spaces for insulation so rough garden compost, straw, chopped bracken - never peat or manure - too wet. And also don't forget slug pellets when they start again in the spring - vital with cannas left out.

When we grew them commercially they were dug, packed into a store on tiered shelves, packed with peat, dusted with sulphur and then checked every few week, damping if necessary. We grew thousands over many years in this way.

I'll be interested to see how yours overwinter. I always found the small rhizomes from seed raised cannas particularly tricky!

[Yorkshire Kris]

Thanks Kris for another video. I do have some comments to add.

You qualify washing off the roots for cleanliness but really that provides a lot of additional disturbance that is likely to lead to rot. Clumps are far better lifted and left with the soil or compost attached overwinter - minimal disturbance - minimal damage!

Again - sand is clean but the point of packing them in something is to keep them moist and sand does not hold moisture. Peat or old compost is much better. Apart for frost damage the greatest risk to canna rhizomes overwinter is dehydration. Most people desiccate them and they die. they must be kept just moist over winter which means some very light damping over which i don't think you mentioned.

When mulching and leaving outside a loose open mulch is much better then soil - needs to have air spaces for insulation so rough garden compost, straw, chopped bracken - never peat or manure - too wet. And also don't forget slug pellets when they start again in the spring - vital with cannas left out.

When we grew them commercially they were dug, packed into a store on tiered shelves, packed with peat, dusted with sulphur and then checked every few week, damping if necessary. We grew thousands over many years in this way.

I'll be interested to see how yours overwinter. I always found the small rhizomes from seed raised cannas particularly tricky!

A valid point! I made sure that I was very careful with washing the soil off and did not snap any rhizomes which is the easiest way to quickly rots off the plants. For a third party source of information see this link http://www.cooltropicalplants.com/Overw ... lants.html Again this was done for cleanliness an to see how the rhizomes had developed over the year


I'll disagree a bit more about this point. Sharp sand will hold enough moisture to get the cannas through the winter as long as they are checked regularly and remoistioned when necessary. I have used it before and also read that this is a good medium to use when storing canna rhizomes in more than one book. Also nearly all rhizomes, corms etc that I have ever bought are packed in a little sand and never compost.


Totally AGREE! I don't know what I said manure as a mulch for overwintering purposes? (Although it's great around plants in spring and summer to keep moisture in) I have used straw, bark, compost and plain garden soil before and all worked if applied liberally enough. Gravel or chipping would be no good and your completely right about peat manure. They will get two wet and allow frost to penetrate much deeper than the same amount of straw.soil/ compost would.


Thanks for your comments Ian I will try and amend the Manure comment on the video. It's great to get feedback from people like yourselves that have many years of experience with these plants


Could I copy and paste your comments above onto the comments on the u tube video??

[Yorkshire Kris]

One more thing OUT OF ALL THE VIDEOS I'VE DONE, I AM LEAST CONFIDENT ABOUT THE POTENTIAL SUCCESS OF THE CANNAS!!!! I give them a 30% chance, reason being they are so so small! This is the first year I've overwintered seed grown cannas. In previous years I 've had nice meaty rhizones to deal with (all lost last winter in the garage) I started filming and thought to myself SH$T when digging and filming at same time! I pulled out the weediest little rhizomes and thought "this ain't gonna work! " ; but there was no going back! Fingers crossed most people watching will have much bigger material to work with.

[Mr List]

just wondering, isnt water supposed to be a better insulator than air?
if so, shouldn't wet manure provide good frost protection?

going from cool tropicals i bought lots of manure for mulch as they advise it on everything (just about)

[Yorkshire Kris]

just wondering, isnt water supposed to be a better insulator than air?
if so, shouldn't wet manure provide good frost protection?

going from cool tropicals i bought lots of manure for mulch as they advise it on everything (just about)

Trapped air is a better insulator than water that freezes through to a living plant.

[Ian Cooke]

Could I copy and paste your comments above onto the comments on the u tube video??

Kris - by all means - happy to be quoted - Ian

[Tom2006]

Thanks for the video. I was going to dig mine up (all grown from seed bar a few) but I am just going to mulch very deeply and hope for the best.

[Yorkshire Kris]

Could I copy and paste your comments above onto the comments on the u tube video??

Kris - by all means - happy to be quoted - Ian

[Yorkshire Kris]

Just found out that the species of canna in the video "Canna Warscewiczii" is very hard to overwinter! I think mainly because the rhizomes are so small. The other types should fare better. The ones that produce big chunky rhizomes are the easiest to overwinter.

[Yorkshire Kris]

Just found out that the species of canna in the video "Canna Warscewiczii" is very hard to overwinter! I think mainly because the rhizomes are so small. The other types should fare better. The ones that produce big chunky rhizomes
are the easiest to overwinter.

All the lifted cannas survived winter and grew away nicely even the small dark leafed ones.

[kata]

Thanks for the vid especially the 'in the ground bit'

Your type look different than mine, my leaves are much bigger. I am hoping to mulch as there are baby ones at the bottom of the stem.

[miketropic]

I have a specie I found in Florida awhile back I THINK there some kind of canna indica that I have left out for a few years now with heavy bark mulch on top.. I have about 300 of these now and have never tried overwintering inside but I think I might dig a few to experiment with this winter..we should have another month or so before I have to put them up

[Dave Brown]

Sorry Kris, read the title and was in hysterics. I imagined you tucking up a Canna video for winter

[flounder]

I'm afraid all my cannas stay in the ground and get the mulchy thing. They're easy enough from seed plus I only really lost indica and tueckheimii last winter, even australia came back albeit not to flowering size, but it was pretty damn cold down here(-8c)
What I'm trying to say is I don't have room for boxes of stuff to be overwintered(translated means I'm too lazy to lift them )