And the tears fell to the ground.
And the canna pots filled to the brim,
Just because, the tears wouldn’t let the sun shine.Anonymous, understandably so.
I was going to post a photo of the demolished, rotting foliage, but it looked so ugly I decided to manage without a photo of the destruction the weather has fraught on our canna collection.
With no sun and the roots drowning with no air, in some pots the foliage gave up its life and flopped right down and started to rot, leaving me wondering what is happening. Usually I let them mature any remaining seed pods and just wait for the first frosts, when I scalp the foliage and bring the pots indoors, but now it was all different.
The choices were simple, if I scalp the pots and move them into the polytunnel, then they will drain and start sprouting again responding to the warm environment. This will be followed by January frosts and then wasted new stems and rhizomes. The alternative is to let the flooded plants in pots flounder-on and perhaps drown when they can’t get air down to the roots.
There wasn’t really a choice, I had to get the plants out of the daily rain deluges, and allow the pots to drain. Yes, there would be unwanted growth afterwards, but there was no choice.
So there we are, with pots draining in the polytunnel and waiting to see how many rhizomes we lose when the frosts eventually arrive in Normandy.