Lotus -- just not the right weather yet?

[bagsmom]

I'm putting in a couple of pictures of the floating lotus leaves so far. I've mentioned elsewhere that these first leaves are a little "crunchy" around the edges and spotty. Is there a disease they have fallen prey to? Or maybe the relatively new pond water (at pH of 8) just isn't fertile enough yet to make the lotus happy? Is this typical for those first leaves? Or is there a problem? You can see the water celery is unhappy too. The fish are great, though! Eating well, curious, having a ball!

 

[Lisak1]

We've noticed lotus leaves browning for one of three reasons - either they got too dry, (we have a few pots outside of the pond that have to be kept full), they got too wet, or they got sunburned. Since yours are in the pond, you can rule out too dry! I'm not sure if it's one of the other two - I'm kind of a lotus novice myself.

But remember that your pond will never be fertile enough to keep your potted lotuses happy - they are heavy, heavy feeders. Once you get aerial leaves, you want to start fertilizing on a regular basis. We feed ours every other week until the leaves start to yellow in the fall.

 

[addy1]

Mine do fine without extra fertilizer, but then again it is a separate tub, gets leaves, dirty pond water, hornwort, anacharis, old lotus plant matter, rots in it adding plenty of yuck to the water that keeps them happy. Never cleaned. I have not fertilized in years.
I never stick my hands in the kitty litter it stinks ..................

 

[Lisak1]

but then again it is a separate tub, gets leaves, dirty pond water, hornwort, anacharis, old lotus plant matter, rots in it adding plenty of yuck to the wate

Yup! In pots in a pond (or even in pots on their own) they just don't get the advantage of all that good stuff. Plus we have to separate and re-pot ours every year, which means clean, fresh kitty litter.

 

[sissy]

Remember that they also like warm weather and warm water and what I read not a lot of full sun