Easy to remember, right?

So I've finally gotten around to pulling the last of the plants out of the garage, and for me that means the ones that were put into tubs. The ones that have been out of sight and out of mind for the past five months or so.


More specifically the cannas, elephant ears, and a few other odds and ends. Things that are easy to recognize so can just be stored in bags or in peat in the tubs. Just pull them out and plant them up.


***


Except what was obvious back in November or early December isn't so much so now. Stems shrivel, rhizomes, corms, and tubers may change color, and now I have some questions.


These are two tubs full of canna rhizomes. Obviously they're eager to get growing, not waiting until I removed them from the tubs, foliage yellow, aching for sunlight.


These must be canna 'Paton', although I'm not entirely sure. The leaves sure look like it, and I had so many different plants of it that it makes sense that I wouldn't label them for storage.

Although this bag got labeled...


...so I question if the others that are without tags are the same.

Are they the common green, red-flowered canna instead? I think the rhizomes on those are a darker color, maybe like these?


These are not labeled either, so they must be the green ones.

At least I labeled the more unique of the varieties:


The question marks aren't making me feel very good though. Why would I do that? Why wouldn't I know the name if I went to the trouble of making a tag?

I wonder what this one is?


Maybe I'll be one of those organized gardeners some day, but that might take some of the fun out of it...

I should have the following cannas:

  • 'Paton'
  • 'Tropicanna'
  • 'Black Knight'
  • 'Wyoming'
  • Plain green/red flowers
  • Canna indica 'Madeira'

I also have a few plants that I grew from seed this spring, which I expect to be plain green with red flowers.

I guess I should just plant these and hope that I guessed correctly on the varieties? I certainly don't want to pot them all up first and wait until the foliage helps me identify them, but that may be the safest bet.


Anybody else terrible with labeling plants, wondering what exactly you have and what to expect? (Let's start a support group!)

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Lisa  – (May 14, 2014 at 5:42 AM)  

We labeled our milk jug winter sown seeds with a sharpie thinking "sharpie NEVER fades". Well, it not only fades, it also washes off given enough time. So we played a bit of match game. Luckily I had separated out the seeds we planted so we only had thirty or so to choose from! "My name is Lisa and I am a bad garden labeler..."!

Mark and Gaz  – (May 14, 2014 at 3:22 PM)  

This sounds familiar Alan. Neither of us are good at labelling and as expected end up forgetting. We now try to make an effort to label as much as we could, for our own sake....

Rock rose  – (May 15, 2014 at 2:08 AM)  

I think you will be having what they call a mixed bag of cannas this year. I sometimes wonder what I am thinking when I fail to name my seed packets. I am sure to remember that distinctive seed but. 6 months later I have forgotten.

Alan  – (May 15, 2014 at 12:01 PM)  

Nice one Jenny: mixed bag. :D

Gardening would be boring if you knew exactly what was going to happen every year, right?

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