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Great Lakes Gardening

When to take out my cannas

16 years ago

Hi

Not much going on in the Cannas forum, so I thought I'd ask here.

I am thinking of digging up my cannas this weekend, mainly because the weather is supposed to be nice and I don't want to end up digging around wet, freezing soil later in the season.

The cannas are still going strong and blooming at this time, in spite of a few nights of mild frost. Is it okay to cut them back now, in terms of having stored enough nutrients for the season? I am planning to dig them up and dry them in the (dark) garage for a few days before moving them to the basement. (With wet soil on them they're just too heavy to move!)

I'm in central ontario and the temps are supposed to crash next week, so we'll likely be getting some frost.

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Comments (3)

jroot
16 years ago
Chris, I am taking mine down this coming week. I'm in total agreement with you about not liking to take them in during cold wet weather. They clean up nicely, and dry up nicer in the weather expected this week, here in Ontario.
sharont
16 years ago
DH suggested I was not following the 'natural' course of events by taking out some of the cannas we have growing around the property. We are to wait until a hard frost stops the growing process. Well, we've now had a hard frost, the first this fall, amazingly! So the leaves are grey and wilted. Their growing cycle is over finally and the corms will get dug up by DH (I hope) in the next week.
Meanwhile the corms I had dug up have green leaves and I have to protect them in a shed ( out of the frost) until the leaves die off before I cut them off.
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Now works for me, too. I've had most of mine out for about 3 weeks. Most of them started breaking dormancy in our unheated garage. We had ice on the ground Saturday morning and they seem completely unaffected. I'm not sure how cold it was but probably not much below freezing. I got a variety of different classes of roses, all of what I bought are advertised to be hardy in my zone.
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tyler_23
16 years ago
After a hard frost when the leaves are definitely dead and the stalks have half browned cut them down to 6 inches above the soil line and leave them to heal for a day. Next day dig em up clean off the roots and trim the roots a little. Plant in moistened peat moss with six inches of stalk showing above the soil line. Put it in a cold cellar for the winter where temps are 40-50 degrees and don't allow peat to completely dry. Also, if you have a lot of tubers, try leaving one in the garden as is, and one in the garden with six inches of mulch and you may find digging them up every year can be avoided. Cheers.

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