mine are too! not only falling over, but after the first flower spike blooms, the second spike sits there and won't open. I thought these plants were easy. I asked this Qquestion (falling over) and did not get any answers from the forum. The get plenty of sun and water. come on, canna people, help us novices

My cannas are all between 8-12 ft. tall, and I haven't had any problems except when the wind speed reaches a certain point, I am no pro but it sounds like to me the root system isn't receiving the proper nutrients to be able to support the plants up to the flowers itself. It could be a soil issue, also what have you done as far as fertilizer and ammending the soil?

I put peat moss into the soil before planting. they are in with a lot of impatiens. I stopped using miracle grow about a month ago, because the impatiens were producing too much foliage, and not enough flowers. have not fertilized since. they are just 5' tall(wyomings) and just stopped doing anything.

canna=sun (for best results) impatiens=shade
canna=dump fertilizer on them impatiens=little fert required
canna= drown in water impatiens= water if you have to, wet feet kills them.

I don't know why your cannas are falling over, but it simply isn't possible to meet the cultural requirements of both in the same spot.

thank you for your help. so you cannot over water canna?

Can you overwater canna? Good question. The short answer is 'no', the longer answer is 'maybe, but it would take some effort or just bad luck'.

Not all canna are the same, but most are considered 'marginal' plants. Marginal means they live happily on the 'margins' of water bodies. Meaning they grow in water logged soils. Many folks use canna in their water gardens with the tubers 6" under water.

Considering this it is indeed dificult to imagine overwatering a canna.

Having said that many also say that the tubers, prior to showing vegetative growth, can rot in water. I would imagine that in a heavy clay soil that is waterlogged there may be some issues as well, but maybe not.

Still, as a general rule, cannas are one plant you do not need to worry about overwatering.

Could it be that the rhizomes were not planted deep enough to support the growth??

Yes you can over-water cannas. If you have them in planters or in a flower bed that recieves too much water or water pools on them when it rains, they are succeptable to rotting just like any bulb, tuber, rhizome or corm.

"I have Intrigue and Stuttgart in part sun."

In the ground or containers? A calcium or silicon deficiency weakens stems. Supplemental feeding of potassium silicate and calcium nitrate (but not together) is practical for containers. I have experience with this and my experiments have shown cannas to be extreme silicon accumulators.

For the ground, there is a silicon fertilizer, Excellerator, that is sold for golf greens. I have no experience with this. See

http://www.firt.org/Presentation_Archive/2007/Scarbrough_Silica_in_Plant_Nutrition_presentation.pdf