well, I am in the same boat and it is also my first time trying canna from seed. Mine have also shot up after only a few days and I think that I will move them to larger, deeper pots soon, right now they are in a tray about 2.5 inches deep at most. I had heard that they can sprot quickly, but I must say I was suprised. I am debating moving them to one gallons where they could stay until I am ready to plant, come on spring! or if I should go smaller first and then to one gallon when they are bigger? Let me know what you are going to do Sue!

Well, right now they (5) are the same small dish...I think I will move them into sterile pop bottles and then into a cooler room...I will eventually move to larger 1 gallon but I am not worried about that move as I will not have to separate them (like I will now)and therefore less root stress...there is a fellow locally who grows them from lifted tubers and he does them in the big home hardware buckets...I will let you know how it goes. Next year I will try one seed per pop bottle...

Another Canna neophyte here...I've got 40 seeds soaking and plan to sow in two days. I was thinking of sowing them in 9-cell packs and then moving those that germinate into 20 oz. styrofoam cups. Should I change my plans and sow them into the cups right away?

I'm picturing 40 gallon pots crammed against my two south-facing windows and beginning to wonder if sowing so many C. musifolia (15 of the 40) in February was such a good idea...

you should be able to see which will germinate from the soaking, they start to swell and a whiteish looking growth emerges. Mine had 100% germination rate from the ones that had the white growth after a few day soak. Had a few duds that never did anything in the water and were not planted. I would go for the cups right away to be honest, they do grow quickly!

Andypython, thanks so much for that helpful info. Hopefully the potting mix will defrost quickly, I don't have near enough usuable at the moment!

Sue, how did the seedlings handle the move?

Hi all....they handled the move wonderfully (so far) I used pop bottles and cut off the top and used it as a dome... they are quickly outgrowing the dome :) so I made a spray bottle of distilled water and damp off and I am going to mist them.I would not put them in cell packs, I had soaked mine for 2 days after nicking them and then planted. They were up in 7 days and grew at a astounding rate!!! The styrofoam cups might give you a couple weeks though. Mine are now in their pop bottle homes in a cooler place to slow growth (and to protect them from cats who think such things are salad) They are about 6 inches now.

Hy everybodu! I hope you will understand my bad english... i learn it 20 years ago, and i have no practice at all!

These are my canna babys, 14 days old. Grown im my room nearby computer, with natural-light bulb abowe.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:528922}}

lidija...do not worry about 'bad english', we all speak 'garden' here :)...Your babys are lovely...do you know what color they will be? Mine are going to be a surprise.

Seeds are from red-flowering canna (i took it on my wacation last year), but i find somewhere on the Google that there is allways a lottery what you growing canna from seeds... so i thing there mine too will be suprise! :-)

ps. We (in former Yugoslavia) have our forum about plants (svetbiljaka.com) and it is realu great, bat today we have some problems with server, so i find "gardenweb.com" while i was surfing along...

well I moved my biggest seedlings into pots, they had good root systems already, I hope they will be fine. I had bulbs from last year that I had pulled inthe fall, and re potted a week or so back, one has shot up, a few others I am not so sure about. they looked a bit on the desicated side when I un packed them. I had tried a few different methods and I must say, one worked much better then the other. The ones that are growing were cleaned off, dried and then put in a box full of loose peat. I covered the box and kept it in a dark cool corner of the basement. worked very well. The others I cleaned and dried and wrapped in news paper, not so successful. I left others in the ground and some are already sprouting, which I am a bit worried about as we are having a period of nice warm, spring like weather, but we could very well have another cold spell, before we are out of the woods, I guess I will just have to cover them and hope if that happens. I would say for Victoria, not much point in pulling the bulbs. those I left in the ground have done as well as those I pulled, so far, although I have more growth on the ones that I pulled, so it might be worth the work...

Just a quick update. Seedlings still growing well. At the same time I planted them I potted up some Musafolia tubers from last year and they have taken off. They are over three feet tall and I have moved them out side to harden off in this very nice weather we have been having. I do not think I will plant them until April at the earliest, hate to loose all this growth to a snap frost.

i bought some canna from a magazine when the tubers showed up there wasn't any planting instructions.i planted the tubers the way i felt was the best way. how do i tell which end is up? also how long should it take to see leaves