It was in the early 1920s when John and Frances Horn of Carnegie, Oklahoma, received a gift from a relative in Arkansas. No one could have imagined that box contained the seeds of a future four-generation farm that would still be around 93 years later. The Horns opened the package to find six canna bulbs—which are tall flowers with colorful summer blooms and leafy foliage.
Frances peddled vegetables as part of the family’s income, so she decided to throw the bulbs in with her vegetable garden. About three years later, the cannas had multiplied and Frances started selling them on her vegetable route. At some point in the mid to late 1920s the cannas sales started outweighing the vegetables. In 1928, Neil—John and Frances’ son—who was 16 at the time, saw great potential in the canna business and offered his parents his Jersey calf in payment for the rights to the canna business.
“That was the official beginning of Horn Canna Farm,” said Nikki Snow, the current co-owner. “Neil thought he could make it more than just cannas on the edge of the vegetable patch. He was really the pioneer who saw the business through the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, and some really hard times.”
In fact, Nikki said in the 1950s, Neil and his wife, Louise lost the entire crop to an early freeze. To find new cannas bulbs to plant, the family temporarily moved to northeastern Oklahoma and Arkansas for weeks at a time, working at other canna farms to secure enough planting stock for their canna operation to start over.
Eventually, Jolene Snow, daughter of Neil and Louise, and her husband, Butch, took over the farm, expanding it to sell cannas across the U.S. Jolene and Butch’s son, Dustin, and his wife, Nikki, joined the farm in 1994 and added computers to fill orders. By 2008, Jolene and Butch retired and Dustin and Nikki, fourth generation canna growers, bought the farm and run it with the help of their five children.
A blooming business
Although for the majority of the farm’s history they were planting about 120 acres of cannas, Nikki said Horn Canna—one of two large canna operations in the United States—has been going through a transition over the last few years.
“When Dustin and I bought the business in 2008, we thought we were going to go big, so we rented the cropland around us and by the summer of 2011 we had 200 acres of cannas,” Nikki explained. “It almost killed us and we learned bigger is not always better. We were grossly inefficient, running a day crew and a night crew and I don’t know if Dustin or I ever slept. It was just too much.”
In the past, much of Horn Canna’s business went to big box stores and in 2018 after they had recovered from the losses of the 200-acre canna years, the Snows started to wonder if they could restructure their business away from those big corporations.
“We have been married to them for so long, and maybe that’s not where our future is,” Nikki said. “We started a five-year process in 2018 to downsize and move away from that sector. Up until 2018, we served the big box stores, homeowners and mom and pop greenhouses and garden centers all over the U.S. This year this was our first official crop that didn’t go to any big box stores and this is our last year to do wholesale as well to garden centers and nurseries. Officially starting next year, we are fully retail and everything goes to homeowners.”
According to Dustin, the last three years Horn Canna Farm has doubled its orders each year because of the change in market segment—last year they shipped 7,350 orders. When they downsized from big box stores, the snows happily reduced their planted acres. Instead of the 200 acres, they are planting 20 to 30 acres of cannas, with 35 varieties in the main field. To supplement the cannas grown in the field, the Snows start individual cannas in their greenhouse in January and February so they will have cannas year round, whether customers want to plant bulbs or skip a few steps with an established plant. They also manage a trial area with 80 varieties that go through a testing phase before they are worked into the main field.
“The majority of our customers are either looking for something very unique, even if it’s not all that pretty, they’re canna enthusiasts or they want a great big bloom,” Nikki said. “Some of the plants that fall between those categories may not be for our market, which is why we plant trials.”
Canna cultivating
What does it take to grow cannas? Nikki said although cannas are tropical plants, they are highly adaptable and Horn Canna Farm serves customers all the way to Canada. She said the northern gardeners put in a little extra effort to grow their cannas. To get more blooms in the growing season, many of them start their plants indoors six to eight weeks before it is warm enough to move them outside.
“They like well-draining soil, but cannas can almost grow anywhere,” Nikki said. “They can grow almost completely submerged in a water garden, in clay or sandy loam. They can survive about anywhere as long as they have plenty of water.”
To make sure the cannas had plenty of water, Neil installed the first irrigations pivots in Caddo County, Oklahoma, in 1948, and the Snows continue that practice today. The Snows plant their cannas in the field on April 1 with a four-row planter that has been modified to use for canna planting as there is not exactly a market for canna equipment. In fact, there are only two canna farms—including Horn Canna—in the U.S.
“We plant at night a couple hours each evening and then we’ll fill orders on the phone all day,” Nikki said. “Four of us ride on the back,
two people ride on the platform and empty the seed—which is really just a smaller bulb that we wouldn’t sell, but we hold back to replant.”
Nikki said they often plant rye in the canna field to keep the soil from blowing and either kill the rye right before or after the cannas are planted. They have also planted sunflowers along with the cannas recently to help with nematode issues. Canna harvest usually starts in mid-October and the Snows use a modified potato digger to harvest the bulbs. Since cannas prefer the coastal weather of Florida and southern Texas, the record cold temperatures of February 2021 were an unwelcome concern for the canna farm.
“It was rough, we prepped for two days when we knew it was coming,” Nikki said. “We pulled all of our stock a couple feet away from the walls in the buildings and put fans in every building to keep air moving along the walls. We knew it was a little risky planting and keeping a greenhouse warm in January and February. We had the thermostats on 110 degrees Fahrenheit and it hovered just about 40 in there. We were sweating it, but they made it through.”
Resilience is a key descriptor for both the canna plant and the four generations of Horn Canna Farm. Just like the plant, the family continues to adapt, overcome and persevere through winter storms and heat waves—literally and figuratively.
“As a gardener myself, there are not a ton of plants out there that you can plant in the spring, bloom in July, survive the late July-early August heat, while blooming until frost,” Nikki said.
To learn more about the farm and visiting it, visit www.cannas.net.
Lacey Newlin can be reached at 620-227-1871 or [email protected]
