Collecting Canna Seeds - Here's mine

This is the first year I've collected the seeds from my canna plants. Until I came to DG I had no idea what those "weird" little green pods might actually hold...and certainly didn't know I could *grow* new ones!

I took some photos of the plants, the seed pods (immature and ripe) and thought I'd share them here.

(A) Left - Immature seed pods / Right - Mature seed pods
(B) Mature seed pods - Split and ready to collect
(C) Method one - retrieve by squeezing pod top to bottom
(D) Method two - Cut entire pod from plant
Center - seeds from three plants (2 - 3 seeds from each pod)

It's easy to know when to collect the seeds. The pods will dry completely and begin to split open or will easily split with squeezed gently . I haven't lost a seed yet as they don't "fly" out of the pod.

Hope this helps.

~julie~

P.S. Please excuse the garden dirt and icky fingernails. :-D

Great pix, Julie. Thanks! I don't have any that dry yet but will sure know what to look for now. You should add them to the PDB if there are no seed/poc pix there. :)

Thanks for the compliment, Kooger...I appreciate it. I'll try to get the pic uploade to the PDB today. (Thanks for the kick in the fanny. ;-))

~julie~

Thanks for the instructions and tips. I've never collected seeds from my Cannas before. I might try it this year. I decided to collect more seeds from many of my plants this year so I can share them with friends.
-Jamie

Jamie...I'm glad the thread helped. I managed to collect quite a few seeds from my cannas as our weather got cooler. Now I'm looking forward to trying to grow them. :-)

~julie~

Anyone have any tips on planting them? Should I soak them first? They seem quite hard . . .

Any tips would be appreciated - I got some from my neighbors plants, but want to make sure I plant them to assure the best germination. .. .

thanks,
Onalee

Julie - that's an excellent rundown on how to harvest the seeds - you should post it on some (at least one!) of the canna entries in the DB so it will be saved there for others to learn from . . .

Onalee

Have you ever thought about just stopping when you see a nice clump of canna and asking if you can collect the seeds.... I did!!! Darlin' lady let me collect the seeds and gave me a couple of plants just in case.

On my next trip I took her a 4" hanging basket of Silver Fuzzy Wandering Jew!!

Now I have lots of seeds and my first attempt 3 seeds in a pot, turned out great I got one seedling. The next attempt of doing the same thing failed one seedling out of 24 planted. Must have been temp, I'll study up on it.

Thank you Onalee, I appreciate your comment. I think you put your finger right on the reason I haven't put the picture in the PDB...I have *no* idea of which entry to post it on. I know there's a discussion going on in Dave's Garden forum about doing something that will allow us to post seed collecting images...but I haven't visited the thread for a while.

judycooksey, thanks for your reply, too. I must admit I've thought of walking up to many a door asking for permission to collect a few seeds for different plants. So far, I haven't done it. :-) But I'm glad *you* did...and that you had great experience as well.

~julie~