First, I obtained seeds from 2 sources. From Park Seed, "Canna South Pacific Scarlet" which won a 2013 All-America Selections Flower Award and is very pretty :) Picture from Park Seed's website:
The packet came with 6 seeds that had been pre-scarified (a small hole had been drilled through the outer shell to help water enter). I poured boiling water over them and let them soak for a few days, changing the water when it got cloudy. Then on Valentine's Day I planted them 3 seeds to a 3" peat pot with my homemade seed starting mixture (1 part perlite/ 1 part vermiculite/ 2 parts peat moss, which is acidic, so I added a little baking soda to the wet mixture until my pH meter read neutral. Little know fact- my day job is teaching chemistry at the local college!). Seedlings popped up within a few days and grew very quickly. I had 5/6 germinate, which is pretty good. I didn't want to deal with their roots becoming too intertwined so I separated them into individual 5" peat pots today, less than 4 weeks after sowing the seeds:
After watering them in I left them in a tub on my porch- these babies have been inside until now, but I don't have room inside for those larger pots so they are going to have to harden off earlier than planned. My porch is a pretty nice place for this- it is south-facing so it gets lots of sun during the day to warm up the concrete, which acts as a heat sink that radiates the heat during the night, keeping it a bit warmer than the garden. Plus a large Carolina Jessamine vine gives it enough speckled shade that the seedlings won't get scorched their first few weeks out (I hope!). We are close to our average frost date of March 15, but my home has been known to get light frosts into the first week or so of April (which I know is nothing to complain about, compared to Northern gardens!) so I will have to keep a close eye on them and cover them up if it looks like frost. I hope they do well- I am looking forward to those big red flowers attracting hummingbirds to my garden this summer!
The second set of seeds came from ebay, at the advantage of it being 1/5 the cost of Park Seed but the disadvantage that I have no idea what the cultivar is. The listing simply said "Canna indica- Yellow" but the picture looked exactly like Canna x generalis 'Cleopatra' which is on my wish list. Here's hoping they turn out nice! These didn't come pre-scarified, so I did that myself by rubbing them against a nail file until I saw a bit of the white undercoat. Soaked them in water for maybe 2-3 days until most of they swelled with water, and planted them in 3" peat pots. Again I had 5 out of 6 seeds germinate, so maybe that's a trend?
Here they are only 2 weeks after planting the seeds. I kept the pots in a gallon ziploc bag for the first week so that they didn't dry out during germination. I love that peat pots are biodegradable but hate the way they are so hygroscopic that they suck moisture right out of the potting mix. Those are lemon balm seedlings next to them in the picture, btw. Canna lilies are hardy in my zone (7b), but zones 7a or higher would probably want to lift the bulbs during the winter. I have had some clumps growing in my back yard for 5 years now without any winter protection and they haven't seemed to suffer from the neglect yet!
