The bed expansion is coming along….. not as fast as it should but it’s progressing.  The plan is to go all along the front street border, widen the bed, thin a couple things out, weed, replant, and then mulch.  Each year I like to clear out a couple spots for cannas and other annuals, and since it’s almost July I better get a move on it before it’s too late.

Cannas are usually easy to grow, but in the past decade canna virus has become a serious problem due to the appearance of yellow streak virus.  CaYSV is the fancy name and it does exactly what it sounds like it does.  On a normally healthy green leaf it produces streaks of yellow.  Here’s a canna I was looking forward to adding to the garden, instead it will end up in the trash due to virus.

I got the canna in a trade and it was supposed to be a nice healthy banana canna and reach up to 12 feet tall… but it’s not to be.  I’ll get over it, but it seems like the plant you can’t have is the one you want most.

The yellow streak virus weakens the leaves and results in brown dead streaks.  Most of the cannas I see for sale have the virus, and Tropicana is one of the worst with green streaks showing up instead of yellow.  It’s a shame but hopefully with tissue culture and more effort in raising healthy plants we can get some healthy cannas back.