Summer come and gone

Gale-force winds and torrential rain battered Britain over the weekend – as summer seems to have been and gone.

But there is worse to come as ­forecasters predict it will carry on raining until August – with no warm weather for weeks.

In the meantime, the Cannas look no better than last year, some good leaves and some imperfect leaves. We had some higher than average temperatures in late June and early July, but they were accompanied by cloud and rain. Now what we really want is some direct sunlight to kick-start the Canna starch making machine.

A hundred years ago Cannas were grown in England as stove plants, which means that they grown in heated green houses. In the last three years of the twenty years that we have grown Cannas we have not had good results, but before that we had many good years.

The severity of the weather we are now experiencing, compared with the gentle drizzle of the traditional English summer is the obvious cause, perhaps we have to revert to growing them protected by glass or poly tunnels throughout the year?

What happens next?

Last year we experimented with some of the collection and moved plants into the polytunnel before the frosts hit, planting them directly into well fertilized soil. This gave them time to recover from the move and start developing roots, and they ticked over quite healthily over the winter, emerging from the soil when the temperatures warmed up sufficiently and we had some splendid foliage growing by the time we planted them outside at the end of May.

A lot of it was tender foliage, which was promptly rubbished by high winds, but if it had been a normal year, whatever that is, it would have hardened of quite nicely.

We are minded to do this to the whole of the collection this year, and to that end we have built a third polytunnel to give us the space necessary to plant 200+ Canna specimens in the ground. The construction of the polytunnel has been a battle of epic proportions, taking 2 months to complete, as so much time was spent dodging heavy rain.

The tunnel is 30' long by 14' wide, and it has net doors, windows and sides, specifically to stop the aphids carrying Canna virus to get access to the treasures contained within.

The new polytunnel waiting for its first winter

I will long remember the feeling of fear as my polythene sheet took of up into the air when a freak gust of wind appeared out of nowhere on a quiet day, and I hung on to it as it thrashed the air fourty feet above me. Luckily my physical build makes me a good anchor, and I was not lifted into the air, but I confess that I was expecting a free flight!

Those little gremlins hide everywhere, and when they see us getting self-congratulatory, they step in and bring us back down to earth, or into the air as the case may be!

However, the effort involved in contructing the tunnel has proven worthwhile and we now are up to date with our jobs at last!

Seed at last

Here we are on the last day of the summer, and we have just collected out first Canna seed! Normally, by now we would have a tall pile of seed envelopes, but so far only C. 'Gaeity' and C. 'Champion' have given us seed. Just two seeds from Gaeity and then three seeds from Champion.

Then I went and dropped one of the Champion seeds! In desperation I crawled around on my hands and knees, but to no avail. I had no option but to accept that I had just lost 20% of this seasons seed harvest! And that from a collection of over 200 plants!

There will be some more seeds shortly, but we have now arrived at the time of year where there is not enough time left for new flowers to create and mature further seed, so what we see maturing on the plants is all we can expect this year.

The degree to which the rains had affected us can be realized when seven days after the last heavy rain I walked on a grass path that was still springy to the step. The ground had become totally saturated and could not hold any more water at all.


The months of rain also meant that all of the fertilizers we spread and dug in during spring and planting-out time have been leached away, so on Saturday I applied a liquid feed and we are just hoping for some decent growth and flowers in the next few weeks. However, the temperature overnight dropped to 6 degrees Centigrade, and that will start inhibiting further free growth.

So, a liquid feed weekly and keeping the plants well-groomed, that's all we have to look forward to for the last part of the season, oh, and a few more seeds!