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Canna seedpods
A few months ago I bought some yellow Canna's. Now some seedpods appears. Is it possible to collect and dry these pods and sowing them next spring?
At the moment the garden is extremly wet and last time my Canna's where decayed in the ground. I have to dig the plants out before the winter but is it better to do it now due to the wet soil or must I wait untill the first frost
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I don't know cannas but green is not ripe. Seed needs to mature and ripen on the plant before you can dry it off
In the sticks near Peterborough
You can sow them, but they are not ripe as Nut says. You need to wait until the seed heads are brown and starting to burst, the seeds will be almost black.
I find they very rarely ripen in my garden, although they are easy to grow from bought seed and will often flower in the first year.
I find you need chip the seeds, then soak for 24 hours, in order to get them to germinate.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
They do grow very easily from seed, Hostafan sent me 10 seeds, they all germinated this Spring and are now flowering, they do need to go brown and dry though as Nut says.
mine are still in the ground, I haven't thought yet what to do with them, my daughter leaves hers in and just piles a load of mulch over them.
Lyn,
As punkdoc so rightly says, wait until the pods start to split. You can give them a shake and if they " rattle" inside , they're getting there.
I hold the seeds in a pair of pliers and nick them with a pair of nail clippers, then soak, as Punkdoc also does.
those I sowed in spring are already ready for collecting the seed.
Thanks you all for your advices. Hopefully the sun will shine for a couple of days to let the pods ripen further. Unfortunately it seems summer is really over and it's cloudy and raining every day so I'am afraid the ripen proces is not an easy one this year.
Digging them out or not is depending on where you live and how the winters are is your area. We had two strong winters and the last one was hardly a winter. When it's freezing for a longer period the soil is frozen up till 25 cm and can "hit" the Canna roots. I've planted them with pots and all so it's easy to dig them out and put them somewhere dry, dark and not to cold.
I guess the pods can continue ripen when I save the plants in a shed