Idea for growing bare root water lilies

[HTH]

My ways are not for everyone. If the idea of seeing a naked lilly rhizome collecting gunk turns you off read no further. Please!

EDIT: After posting this I did some searching and found the DrCase and a few others are going bare root. Some places on the web claim they will not do well. That just depends on what they have for nutrients etc.

Why do we pot water lilies. As far as I can tell it is mostly to keep them anchored to the bottom.

I have noticed that given time they collect enough gunk around their root to remain anchored all by themselves. Man handling pots is a lot of work. Can we get by without pots ?

The question is how does one keep a lily that wants to float on the bottom so it can anchor itself.

I propose attaching the water lily rhizome to a brick using a zip tie. Bricks with holes would work best.

Some experimentation is need to see how best attach the lily but I expect it can be worked out.

There are 3 very real advantages to this.

1. No more stomping around the pond to fertilize the lilies.

2. No more repotting. When they big you can lop of a section without removing it from the pond.

3. They will extract nutrients from the water.

The down side is that they will collect gunk around the roots and that when the pond is depleted of nutrients you need to add fertilizer to the water or they will not bloom. Some people will not like this but i can live with it.

If you have not been reading my other thread about cleaning our pond this is one of the largest lilies we manged to lift with Mr B Hoe. With the gunk on its roots it was just a few pounds denser then the water it displaced. That made it easy to move in the water but hugely heavy in the air. Note that this monster has only made a few leaves. Think of what it will look like by mid summer
[sharedmedia=gallery:images:2964]

 

[DrCase]

'My bare root lily takes care of its self during the winter as the leaves die it sinks to the bottom.
Early spring growth makes it come up a little

 

[addy1]

I had one jump its pot in the small preform pond, I could barely lift the sucker out, I have no problem throwing heavy rocks around, but that lily was too much. So for me, I am going to keep them contained in pots.

They out grow the pots, usually in a season. I did not groom them this year, so I am sure some will jump the pot again.

 

[HTH]

I had one jump its pot in the small preform pond, I could barely lift the sucker out, I have no problem throwing heavy rocks around, but that lily was too much. So for me, I am going to keep them contained in pots.

They out grow the pots, usually in a season. I did not groom them this year, so I am sure some will jump the pot again.

I think they key here is to cut into manageable chunks right in the pond.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Why do we pot water lilies. As far as I can tell it is mostly to keep them anchored to the bottom.

Actually there are a few reasons people prefer to keep lilies in pots, Addy alluded to one of them, to keep them under control. Yes pots can be heavy, but regularly root pruning and re-potting will stop them getting too big to handle. That big monster in your picture is nothin compared to some pictures I've seen of neglected and overgrown root balls.
But I think the main advantage of potted lilies is the blooms. It's all about the flowers, everybody wants lots of blooms, and in order to get the most blooms out of a lily you need to feed it lots of fertilizer. Sure you'll still get some blooms from lilies plant with bare roots, but unless your pond water is particularly rich in organic mater (read dirty), or you are actually dumping fertilizer into your pond, you won't get as many blooms as you can with a potted lily that has been well fertilized. Essentially, the pot not only helps you contains the roots, it also helps you contain the extra fertilizer you'll want to feed the lily (if) you are interested in getting the most blooms out of your plants.
Of course that doesn't mean you can't let your plants grow wild in the pond. Many people plant different plants barefoot in the pond, and even if you try to keep them contained it can be an ongoing battle keeping them from spreading through out the pond. Actually lilies are some of the easiest plants to keep contained in their pots. Personally, that's an advantage I think I'll work with rather with than against. :highfive:

 

[capewind]

A friend gave me a TINY tuber last year that she found floating in her pond ... the little tuber was MAYBE the size of a quarter of a pencil in both length and width... we floated it til it had roots, then pinned it to the bottom (12" deep x 48" tub) by placing a rock over its roots til it got bigger. I like lilies, but am not the fan that hubby is. I want them potted to be contained. Hubby is up to 16 pots of them now (6 colors) ... once they bloom (so *I* know what color is where), going to get him to reduce them to 12 (2 of each color) as I know how this will go when they need to be divided again (this year) ... I do NOT want 30, 60, etc LOL.

 

[HTH]

We moved with over 100 lilly pots and about that many marginals. When we were selling cutting we were in the ponds most every weekend making divisions and potting. There is no demand for them here. Going bare root will cut the work to a fraction of what it was with pots. And a lilly without a pot can't spill dirt into the pond. It might make cleaning the pond easier too if one can use a pond vac to suck up the gunk around the roots.

Murkey_Waters. Not to start a pissing contest on the largest lily but what I posted were chunks my wife cut to get them to where they were manageable with the little backhoe. It could well be that somewhere in the world there is one the size of a small house. The oldest ones here had 8 years growth and I am not proud of that. I did think that people might enjoy me sharing the images.

For a while I have been wanting to work with miniature lilies maybe even do some crossings to produce varieties one can more easily grown in tubs, preformed ponds and rain barrels. About the size of helvola..

 

[capewind]

I thought it was neat to see such a monster root ball, but never want to see that here LOL ... hubby was originally talking of making a "bed" for them in the next pond ... call it a cross between a gravel filled bog, and a flower/window box people put on houses ... or maybe you'd call it a low shelf with a front wall??? I have no clue what to call it ... anyways ... we've been talking about making the overall pond more shallow than the main pond (which is 4-5' deep), so then he can just set the pots where ever, on the floor of the pond. As long as I am getting the waterfall I want, and can let babies grow out in that pond, he can design it however he wants it for his lilies LOL.

 

[HTH]

From what I seen the root will do a fair job of filtering without the gravel. I expect the lilies will just turn it into a solid mass. Each year pull out some of the old growth that will not let water pass. That sort of thing.

 

[HTH]

Found this mini lily and got excited well till I read that it was sculpted from clay.

 

[HTH]

If anyone is wondering my wife has weighed in on the size of the large rhizome cluster we removed from the pond. She had to cut it into six large chunks to move it out of the pond. One had the pot. She went on to say we still have one left that is larger, it is roughly the size of a twin bed.

I do not want to toss any of these as they may have several varieties grown together. Once they start blooming we can discard some.

 

[addy1]

I know what you mean, I have some pots marked some not. Size of a twin bed.............wow!

Had too many lilies in the big pond last year, this year I have 4 in the new shubbie tank which decreased the number in the big pond. More manageable, still have trouble tossing. Waiting to see what colors they are and try to do better marking, they will need groomed this fall or next spring. I groomed them heavy last year. There are a few that really grow fast and well and bloom like crazy a few others that are slower, but still beautiful.

 

[JenH]

Since I'm to lazy to read everyone's comments...I'm still gonna put in my two cents cause I'm sure if someone already said it, it bears repeating. I had 2 lilies in my pond last spring one I planted in clay cat litter with osmocote and occasional lily tabs, the other I planted bare root, but still was able to tuck lily pads under the rocks I buried it with so, aside from the osmocote they both got the same treatment all season. Well I just spent the last 2 days working on my pond, doing my spring cleanout (didn't do it in the fall) and I can tell ya right now, I will NEVER plant my lilies bare root again. Yes the pot was heavy, but it was no where near as difficult to get out of my pond as that bare root lily was. I swear I almost killed myself tugging that thing out of there. Now, I haven't divided the potted lily yet, so don't know what the tuber looks like yet, but the bare root one was huge. Also, all season last year my bare root plant had smaller leaves and less blooms then the one I had in a pot, and it was also a lot harder for me to get to it to trim off dead leaves and such to keep it tidy. I also noticed that when I did get it out of the water it smelled horrific. Which I can only assume means that it was harboring tons of anaerobic bacteria (is that right, the bad kind?) Now I know my potted lily is gonna smell too but the way I see it at least it is contained. Hope that all helps.....

 

[HTH]

I started this thread by saying "My ways are not for everyone."

My situation is much different in that I have far more lilies. It could take a week or weeks of full time work to repot them as well as a mountian of pots and kitty litter. As I suggested earlier if the lily is too big to move cut it up into chunks you can handle. Give away or compost what you don't need.

We got about 3/4 of them out in a short day and should finish in a few hours. Another day or two to put them back.

The stink should be exactly the same as you have with a veggie filter.

 

[addy1]

Yep agree hth, we all have our own ways that work for us and it not for others, just like my bog, works for me but not for everybody.

I bet your pond is a beautiful mix of colors in the summer.