Yellow Butterfly Koi ID.

[CliffandJoann]

oops, sorry addy...I got mixed up.

For the ladies and gents too

Even more lotus inspired arrangements.

All natural dried stuff... I put the pine comes
on sticks and sprayed them gold.

For the ladies that are interested, I got
the Asian Elephant vase on ebay with the intention
of making a lamp out of it. However, I chickened out,
afraid I would ruin the vase. (still thinking about it though)

I'm looking forward to adding some more lotus pods to both these
arrangements later this fall.

 

[taherrmann4]

Joann it looks like you still have seeds in those lotus pods.

 

[CliffandJoann]

Yes they still have seeds in the pods, but they're years old...are they still
good?

 

[HARO]

I recall having read somewhere that lotus seeds found in a pharao's tomb were still viable, and produced plants! Yours should too. John

 

[taherrmann4]

That is how I tried to grow mine this year, they just kept getting eaten by the raccoon, so maybe next year. There is a forum on it and how to do it, if I find it I will link it for you.

 

[taherrmann4]

Here it is...Some great info.

https://www.gardenpondforum.com/topic/6984-michaels-dry-lotus-flower-seeds/

 

[CliffandJoann]

Interesting Haro,
T-mann, we trap our racoons and relocate them
to Cliff's fishing hole.

We let the possoms stay, but our pet possom
'Pogo" stole all our ripe tomato's (12) yesterday.
We only have one tomato plant, and got to only
pick two of them... Pogo got the lion's share.

 

[CliffandJoann]

Thanks T-mann for the link, we posted at the same time.

We have a very sunny guest room upstairs where Cliff
over winters some plants. He sucessfully kept water lettuce
last winter. I'll show him the lotus thread, maybe he'll try lotus
from seeds this winter.

 

[fishin4cars]

I like that one as well, That's similar to some my Mom used to make years ago, She used to spray some of the dried flowers with Gold flake and silver flake when the dried flowers were neat shaped but no color. I remember her painting the Ucalyptus, and lotus pods, and some flower that looked like dill weed that grew near the house. I can remember gathering those and drying them in the attic. She sold them for years at craft shows and church fund raising events.

 

[j.w]

Thanks T-mann for the link, we posted at the same time.

We have a very sunny guest room upstairs where Cliff
over winters some plants. He sucessfully kept water lettuce
last winter. I'll show him the lotus thread, maybe he'll try lotus
from seeds this winter.

Joann you mentioned Cliff over wintering Water Lettuce. How did he go about it?

 

[CountryEscape]

I'm anxious to hear about the water lettuce, too, Joann! I could not grow it this year in my pond, maybe too new (first year) so if I could find a plant, maybe I'll try to raise some water lettuce and hyacinth in my house for the winter! You said a sunny guest room. Please let us know how he accomplished that task!

 

[addy1]

our sun room is like summer all winter, the sun comes in strong, have to decide if I want the bother of messing with them, but now you all are tweaking my interest, if it would work to keep them alive. A airstone, water and sun.

 

[CliffandJoann]

The front of our house faces south, in the winter when the leaves fall off the trees
the house is very sunny. The LR is faces south, so we keep a taro plant, umbrella palm,
and our orchids in the LR.
The rest of the taros and umbrella plants go down the basement.
After a while the basement taros look dead, dead, dead...but they're alive. When we take them
out in the spring and put them in the pond they quickly send up new shoots. The umbrella palms
fair pretty well in the basement.

Now for the water lettuce...he built shelf entensions on the window sills in the southern
facing guest room. He put one small water lettuce in one container filled with water...
all he did was make sure the container was filled with water...the little plant made three
babies...in the spring he put them in the biological pond and they spread nicely.
In this room he also put another big taro and a big umbrella palm on the floor and they
did beautifully.
In 1998 we bought one taro and one umbrella palm, all the taro's and umbrella palms
are the offspring of the original plants, and we've given away a slew of these plants
over the years.

This was the first time he ever wintered over water lettuce. This winter we plan on
doing several pieces of water lettuce in individual containers, as well as a few pieces
of hyacinth. The secret is sunny windows, and the room should be on the cool side,
too warm is not good, the plants like it on the cool side.

btw...the container we use for the water lettuce are the pint size containers
from Chinese soup take-out.
We call them Chinese tupperware.

 

[CliffandJoann]

addy we posted at the same time.

A sunroom is perfect, you could put them in nice pretty little pots
instead of Chinese tupperware...or even big decorative pots for that matter.

The floating water lettuce is a cute little plant.

btw, no air stone necessary, just water

 

[fishin4cars]

Joanne, It's funny you mention no airstone necessary. Both times I tried to overwinter in the green house I tried using a airstone in the container with the lettuce and Hyacinths. Both times they didn't survive. This year I have started setting up small tub water gardens. I have one set up with air and five without. The one with air the water lettuce is doing by far the worst in. I hadn't even paid attention to that detail until your post. That might just be the secret, small container with still water. Luckily here the weather is mild enough some usually survive the winter for the next year. But it would be nice to have a few starts that are already up and going to start out each spring.