Canna, Canna Lily 'Black Knight'

In not sure about this one. In fact Im a bit terrified to plant it. Someone bought me four packets of largish "Black Night" rhizomes at a...Read More Walmart as a gift. I would never buy Rhizomes, they need to be growing and flowering for me to see they are healthy. Plus I have seed grown virus free F1 cultivars and the last thing I want to do is infect them. Problem is insects transfer the virus no matter how far away you try and plant them from the others.
To do or not to do is the question.......if the Van Zyverden packet said grown from virus free stock I would be soooo much happier, but it doesn't of course. So maybe not. Most sellers should realise that virus free is a selling point by now, so if they fail to mention that it means they don't guarantee it end of story.

Wow! I could not believe how beautiful and healthy the 5-gallon Black Knight cannas were at Sperling Nursery in Calabasas CA. I bought tw...Read Moreo at $30 each to use in one of my landscape designs. The cannas were well cared-for and almost pristine in appearance with 5 to 8 stalks in each pot. Total bargain for plants so beautiful and robust :)

I don't believe I could get rid of this beauty if I intended to. The first year, I lost track of them (about a dozen) in fall because I'...Read Mored inadvertently covered them with about 2" of leaves & soil. They came up beautifully. Last winter I pulled them out of the ground (they were soaked and I worried about winter rot) but didn't get them inside. They froze and dried into wizened little dead things.

Luckily, I overlooked destroying one lonely rhizome, which came up in May and propagated wildly. Six or seven bloomed in summer (2012) and by Oct., I counted 29 ready to be separated.

I'm in Zone 6, but have a Zone 7 microclimate. The canna are watered less than most of the garden but are growing behind a decaying stump that may provide additional moisture. I (generally) leave them in the ground all winter, mulch-less, and transplant them throughout their growing period. If they are too tall, the tips of older leaves will turn brown so I try to transplant them before too many leaves have appeared.

Very successful here in 9b, cannas will just keep coming up and coming up. Love water but seem to be pretty drought/heat resistant when ...Read Moreestablished. Ours looked best in spring and early summer...late summer brought about some kind of caterpillar that turned the beautiful foliage into nothing but ragged pieces every year. They can get a little top-heavy when the stalks get pretty tall; many of mine bent and collapsed. Cannas are great if you're looking for something you can basically ignore and if a bit of messiness doesn't bother you, but unattractive spent stalks and many brown, spent leaves combined with the caterpillar problems caused us to remove ours.