Ordering water lilies

[Shdwdrgn]

Since nobody locally has any water lilies for a decent price this year, I jumped on Amazon to look around. I found this package deal of 6 lilies for $50 and put in my order. Not sure if I will see any blooms this year, but my fish are gonna love having so much cover now!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009XHG14/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

 

[DrCase]

With sun you will get a bloom or more

 

[ididntdoit99]

not bad price, and a nice variety of colors... now i'm tempted to buy some more.... Then again as fast as all of my plants are growing i'll run out of room soon.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Well I don't really have the space for six lilies. I was thinking four more be be just about right. However... chances are pretty good that not all the plants will survive, so in the end I may wind up with a good number in my pond anyway.

 

[addy1]

My lilies where just little starts last spring, they all bloomed a lot and grew large. you most likely will get some great flowers

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Just wanted to say that the lilies arrived today and they all have some very healthy-looking bulbs! There is at least a leaf or two on each plant, and a couple had some flower buds trying to grow.

Since they arrived late this evening, I have them unwrapped and floating in a bucket of pond water. So now my next question... what does everyone use to sink their bulbs? I was thinking of rubber-banding a rock to each, and let them drop into the sand in the bottom, but I'm not sure a rubber band will hold up long enough for the bulbs to put out enough roots to hold themselves in place. I don't have any more extra mesh bags to put rocks in like I did with my current lilies, so I'm not sure what to do? I have some nylon string, but I don't think that will hold on to the rocks very well.

Any thoughts for something quick & simple?

 

[addy1]

Fishing line, those plastic wire ties, nylon rope

 

[j.w]

When I had some water lilies waiting to plant in a tub I took some of those netted plastic onion bags and cut them up to fit each tuber in a little bag size piece and then tied a twisty plastic wire around the neck.........oh and put a small rock in to weigh it down. They stayed find like that till it was time to plant them. So don't know why you couldn't keep them in that as the roots will just grow through the bags and the pads will too if any get caught underneath the wire in the bags.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

I think I figured out what I can do... last night I grabbed a 2" rock from my garden and used a mortar bit to drill a hole through it. Now I have a holy rock! It took a bit of time because I kept hitting some really hard spots through this rock, but this gives me a way to tie the rock to the roots without worrying that the rock will slip out of the rope.

Now to do that 5 more times...

 

[j.w]

Good Idea, not something I would try............I'd put a hole in myself, but good for you!
Could you just use a stainless steel washer or do they eventually wear away too?

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Yeah any kind of steel will eventually rust away, stainless just takes a lot longer. Aluminum would probably be a good choice, but you'd need a decent size block of it to hold down the plants. And of course copper and brass are bad choices.

For drilling the rocks, I have a small vice that sits on my drill press. This way the rock is held securely, and if it happens to break, my hand isn't right next to the flying shards.

 

[j.w]

Oops you mean the stainless steel waterfall basin that my DH made is going to rust? Uh oh! How long will this take I wonder?

 

[Mmathis]

How are you supposed to plant lilies? I have 2 that I bought at LOWES a while back. Right now I have them in a kitty litter pan (a deep one -- not shallow like most litter pans), awaiting completion of my pond. They came in little net bags, and the directions said to leave them that way. I keep the water filled to max which is maybe 10-12" deep, and have them in full sun. They both have lots of little leaves and seem healthy.

When it comes time to "pond-plant" them, what should I do with them? Pots, weighted bags as suggested in this post? How deep?

Oh, and is there some kind of "process" taking place in the net bags? Sometimes I'll stop for a look and there will be some obvious movement around the plants. I keep expecting to see a little frog or some kind of bug in the water, but never see anything. Sometimes if I jiggle one of the plants to see if there's anything there, bubbles will suddendly appear, but no critters. Just curious.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

My understanding is that the larger water lilies will do well in up to 6 feet of water, but lately I've been seeing some that claim they should only be in up to 2' of water, so I'm not exactly sure what the story is here..?

As for planting - I have a couple inches of sand in the bottom of my pond, so my current large lily was removed from the mesh bag and simply tied to a rock to cause it to sink into the sand. Apparently it *really* liked that, because after several years of barely putting out a single flower each year, it is going crazy now! Plant them in some sort of substrate (the kitty litter may work well) that you can contain, and make sure there is enough weight to sink the bulb. All of the lily bulbs I have seen will float, so I tie a rock to them that is about the same size as the bulb. Give them something to sink their root in to, and a place where they can get lots of sunlight, and they will be happy plants.

 

[Mmathis]

I'll have to dig out the packaging. Want to say it said 2' for these, but also said that initially to only keep them about 6" deep. Each of the 2 plants has 1/2 dozen or more leaves. They're tiny leaves -- the largest is, maybe, 1-1/2". I was expecting the leaves to be bigger -- will they get bigger over time? I figure the plants will do better once they are in a permanent location.