Help my lotus is escaping!

[milhousebarks]

Hi,
I have a Momo Botan lotus that I got started a little late in the season. It seems to be growing well and has 2 leaves up in the air and a whole bunch on the water. When I got it, I didn't have a lot of options for pots around and planted it in the 10-gallon pot that I cut the top half off of. The person I bought it from said they didn't need a lot of depth of soil and keeping them in a wide shallow pot would make it easier to get the tubers out and separate them in the future. I lined the pot with newspaper to cover the drainage holes and planted it with our clayish garden loam - just putting the tuber on the top of the loam with a small rock to hold it in place. There were several growing points - 2 or 3, but it is hard to tell for sure which are active now that they're in the loam.

Anyway, I looked down around the pot and noticed that one of the growing points (most likely the most active and developed one, since the others are still only making smaller leaves) seems to be escaping out one of the drainage holes. My first inclination is to clip it off and hope it branches off again from somewhere in the pot, but I had heard that breaking off the growing points for lotus can be catastrophic. Other options seem to be:

1. Just let it go and try to make sure it doesn't wind up in another plants pot.

2. Put another pot of loam in where the shoot is heading and put a rock on it when it gets there so it roots in the new container. If I do this, can I ever cut the "tether"? Like maybe when it dies back for winter. Otherwise it will be awfully hard to get the two pots to the bottom of the pond for the winter. The main pot is currenly up on a shelf and the soil is only 3-4 inches below the surface.

3. I had been thinking of growing this in a container next year instead, so maybe I could just pull the pot out and carefully place it in a half barrel while making sure not to break the growing point. Then I could dump so more loam over the whole thing and put water in on top. That way the growth would stay in the soil and I could deal with part of it being outside and part of it being inside when I separate it in the spring. If I did this, I guess I would just over winter it in the crawl space to keep it from freezing.

Thoughts? What happens if you trim the tuber/growing points of an actively growing lotus?

 

[DrCase]

I would let it do what it wants to this season
You can repot it next spring

 

[sissy]

you can kill the whole plant sometimes by cutting tubers off at the wrong time of season .

 

[milhousebarks]

Okay, I'll let it be. Although I may need to start using some bonsai wire or the like to guide it so it doesn't find a home in another nearby pot. It seems to grow about an inch or 2 a day so it may have done a complete lap of my tiny pond by fall...

 

[adavisus]

Yup, lotus can scoot at the rate of 3 foot per month

Why not get a bigger pot and plonk the existing pot within.... say a 20 gallon that does have the drainage holes sealed...

Oh, yups, the growing point of a lotus is the business end of the whole runner. Snip it and that may be the end of the runner, if there are no other growing points started as side shoots

 

[milhousebarks]

Hi. Thanks for the suggestions.

I know there are other growing points because I see them coming up in other parts of the pot. But the leaves are definitely smaller and still just floaters. Still I'd rather not snip what I think is probably the biggest growth point.

But I'm also hesitant to just let it run rampant all summer, so what if I train the escapee into another pot and let it get established there. After a few leaves come up and it seems happy in the new put could I cut the connector and separate them?

I just checked and I can't get it into another pot since it is in a pot that is actually as wide as the bottom of a half barrel. So my thought of putting it in the half barrel won't work either...

Next year no holes!

 

[sissy]

could you put it in another tank for now,I have mine in a lotus pond because i read they can be aggressive .All you need in there is an air line hose

 

[adavisus]

Yup, a circular shallow pot or tray with 3'" of soft dirt would be doable, to persuade the wascally runner to scoot around in circles within

Running rampant in circles may be preferable to what 'lotus gone wild' can do, you can sever it when the lotus quits growing and repot, move, store it elsewhere when it has formed tubers for Winter

 

[Oldhead]

I would let it go. My lotus has a mind of its own. It grows out of the drain holes. This year it has shot runners in the pond and now has 5 flowers growing. Most it ever had was 2. Its about 4 years old now.

 

[milhousebarks]

Hi,
So I've gone ahead with the plan to capture the lotus. Here are 2 photos - a bit tough with the glare. The first shows the runner coming out of the pot on the right into the new pot below and under a rock to hold it down. On the right, just were it lands in the new pot you can see the roots and leave stem (very hard to see) from the first leaf on the runner. A new leaf is beginning to come up on the far side of the pot but doesn't show in this pic.

And then here is a closer shot showing it going into the new pot, but you can't see the leaf stem, etc. on the right because of the glare. I really need a polarizing filter for my camera phone!

New leaves are continuing to come up from at least 2 places in the original pot, so there are definitely several runners back in the "home" pot. I'm wondering if I really need to wait until the plant goes dormant to snip it, since this is now taking up a good bit of room in my little pond. The main pot is 16" in diameter and the new pot (without drainage holes) is only 12", but if I can sever the connection after a few more leaves come up I might move it into a container. But of course I doubt the new plant would make any flowers at this point if I sever it... If the main pot lived and the new one died I would be okay with that, but if neither flowers if I sever them that would make me sad.

 

[milhousebarks]

I like to see updates in threads to peoples problems, etc. to see what the resolution (or not) is, so I'm trying to keep any threads I started updated in there is anything to report. My Lotus quickly put up a bunch of leaves in the new, axillary pot I had tucked the wayward runner into and then promptly jumped out through a hole on the other side as well. I tucked that other escaping runner (and one that came after it) back over the rim into the main pot and everything seems still alive. With all the room it has taken across both these pots it is quite a mound of leaves, but the good news is that I have 4 buds up and enough time left in the summer to hope for more. Here is a photo of the barely contained beast.

Only 3 of the buds are showing in the photo, so you'll have to take my word that there is another one coming up below the leaves in the axillary pot 2 of the buds are from the auxillary pot and the 2 in the forground are from the runner that jumped out on that side and were tucked back over. This thing grows so fast that I'll definitely need to keep an eye on it!