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How to Grow Tropicana in Containers
Hi, I’m David Epstein this is Growing Wisdom and this great Tropicana Canna in my hand with all its wonderful colors. On today’s segment we’re going to talk about how to create award wining containers with these guys as the centerpiece. The Tropicana’s come in three great colors. Tropicana original, Tropicana gold and Tropicana black. We’re going to work with Tropicana gold and Tropicana original today so a few things about designing containers. The container we use needs to be big enough to support this plant. I’m using one that’s 12 inches across are probably have to transplant it in a year or so. If you don’t want to have to transplant or divide the cannas as often use a container that’s at least 18 inches in diameter. The other important aspect is that the container has some height, our container is 18 inches high and put some buckwheat holes at the bottom of the container then I put some burlap on top of the buckwheat holes then I filled that with the soil. This allows me to use less soil and makes the container a little bit lighter. Once you’ve got the container setup with some soil you ready the plant.
I’m going to start with the Tropicana gold and the way I’m going to design this container is with fully edge to create color. We’re not going to use any flowers. Our plants have purple foliage and have lime foliage. What I think that’s going to do is really help to pop this plant at the container and give it a nice clean look. When you’re a designing container you want a thriller, a filler and a spiller. Of course our Tropicanas are the thriller. We’re going to use the foliage plant as your fillers and our spillers because we’ll grow over the container and really allow it to look nice and fold. Another idea would be use a mixed of foliage plants and flowering plants with your Tropicanas. So we’ve got some small zinnias that are flowering, some petunias and we’ll design using the Tropicana original and we’ll put some flowers around it.
In the colder months as the leaves dieback from the first frost, cut them back. If you live in the coldest zones, say zone 6, 5, 4 and colder you want to bring them inside. In the warmer climate, roughly zone 7 and higher you can leave it in the container cutback and as the weather starts to warm up new growth will start to flash out. They’re like full sun at least four to five hours a day more if you can give it them. Heat them evenly moist although they handle a little bit of drought. If the plants get really dry the foliage may start to loose some of its vibrant color. If that happens cut it back, water it even a little fertilizer and it will flash out some great new growth. If you’re wondering how big these guys are going to get in really ideal conditions three to four feet high. So if you feed them, water them and you have a great warm summer they’re going to get pretty big just remember that wherever you place them. Comeback every week for our all out tips and help here at Growing Wisdom.
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