Accessible Gardening: Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners #8, 1 by seacanepain

seacanepain wrote:
It has been an insanely busy week. Stretched us all to our physical limits. After being very dry for the month, we had torrential rains. Some bags of Portland cement got damp meaning Kay had no choice but to turn it into concrete immediately.. O-o-ops, we need a new concrete mixer. She had to hand mix much of it. (A bag of Portland makes a LOT of concrete.) While Kay’s been striving to keep everything from washing away outside, Nadine and I took on the chaos of her art room and my workshop together. I’ll be teaching Nadine to sew and do small woodworking next week. She took Home Ec. And Shop courses in high school so it is more a matter of teaching her to use an advanced sewing machine and my woodworking tools. Helping J. and Kay’s eldest took a big bite out of our savings this year. We need to focus a while on recouping our financial losses. We’ve ironed out a plan for the coming year.

We celebrate Halloween in much the same way most people celebrate New Year’s Eve. . Living close to the land in this region, November 1st makes more sense. That is when it really starts to cool down here. This year’s harvest is in and we start preparing the ground for next season. It is the HORTICULTURAL New Year for us. January 1st seems more an artificial, arbitrary CALENDAR new year. (We don’t snub Jan. 1, of course. During that depressing time of year, we’ll take any excuse for a party we can find.)
Carrie, I guess it is a good thing we never tried to eat those canna roots. Lol. With the newest info, my guess would be that the original stand is Canna musafolia ‘Rubra’. Nadine delved deep into the confusing world of canna after she read Larry Retting’s article. The Flicker image labeled Canna musafolia ‘Rubra’ looks like those in the original stand of dark leaf canna.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/riz_reyes/4859057587
I’ll make sure the plants you get in spring come from the original stand. Those have leaves of a more solid burgundy. (Violet hued, when grown in deep shade.)
We could probably fill all the request Larry Retting gets. I’ll plant a few of the seeds I collected to be sure they aren’t sterile and are true to form. There are green leaf canna here they could conceivably cross with, but I've never noticed them blooming at the same time. It is a fairly safe bet they will have dark leaves, but I want to be certain. We have plenty of those to share even without seed. They spread by root so well Kay uses them for erosion control. The burgundy margins on our unstable, reverted type seem much wider than what I see in most photos, but that may be because they keep crossing back into the ‘Rubra’. I think I will move the original further away from its mongrel offspring. This variety is so variable. It might be possible to stabilize different variations. I’m somewhat confused by the images I see in Plant Files. It SAYS the leaves are burgundy, but shows green leaf canna in most of the images. Once we have a certain ID, maybe we should add some images to that entry. You think?
I built a mini-greenhouse this week from stuff I found beside the road on large pick-up garbage day and clear corrugated panels we had around. It should stay warm enough to keep us in salad greens all winter even without being heated.
What has everyone else been up to this week? (Jim)


This message was edited Oct 30, 2010 7:04 PM