Wooo Hooo! Lotus Seeds Germinating!

That's the perfect time to stop fertilizing everything!

I don't grow mine in a pond. They can indeed become invasive if they are left to grow wild. I have two water containers that I grow one or two lotus in each pot. I also remove the leaves above the surface of the water when they turn brown. And I have mine growing in the Walmart Special Kitty Litter, not dirt. These plants seem pretty hardy if they get off to a good start. Yours look great, X! Amazing that they did so well growing them from seed. That is NOT an easy feat! Commendable, indeed! It took me two years to get blooms on my small tubers, so I would figure the same for you. Maybe towards the end of the growing season next year you'll get your first blooms! Congrats!

I enjoy the pics so.....
How high a temperature can a lotus in a pot take? Our weater has been 100 for a month to 6 weeks now and I am wondering if the water would get too hot if placed in full sun.

:-)

As long as you keep adding water as it evaporates, I think it would be fine. Mine are in those light grey pots because mine are in full sun all day long. (14 hours a day in late June!) They need sunlight to thrive along with fertilizer since they are heavy feeders. Mine don't even start waking up until the water reaches 75 degrees. So my guess is they don't mind warm water at all. If you are worried about it, transfer them to a lighter color pot or spray paint your pot a light color.

I've kept mine in full sun and the water in the tubs have gotten to 97 degrees with no detrimental effects that I could see to the plants.

Thanks for all the info. Now I know "the rest of the story".
Appreciate everyone.

Well I'm disgusted .. after feeling around the bottom of one of the tubs with the lotus in it and not finding any tubers I dumped the whole thing and this is what I found. Now what do I do with this?

X don't give up yet! I would put those back in a shallow pot with water, put it in a garage, or some other cool, dark place and haul it out into the sunlight in Feb. when it's warming up again. If you get leaf shoots once the water warms, you're golden. If not, start some more seeds, or order a tuber from a nursery. Having never started a lotus from seed, I really don't know how long it takes for them to make a tuber. But those white roots certainly are still alive, so they might still produce good leaf growth next year.

Did you get lots of big green leaves before they started to go dormant? For reference, my dwarf lotus has leaves from 5in. to 8 in. across, but bigger types can have leaves 2ft. across. I probably had 25 leaves in my tub from 2 tubers. They are just going dormant now.

Maybe it takes two years' growth of big healthy leaves to make a tuber - that would explain why the water garden nurseries charge so much for their tubers. Note! They ONLY ship lotus tubers in early spring before the shoots have started up because the shoots are so delicate that they easily break off when shipped. Tubers are very fragile, too. So be careful if you investigate your other pot.

It stayed in the coin stage and the other pot is still producing the lily pad leaves. I might just dump this in the other pot and stick it in the utility room.

Those large white roots are the young tubers. Do like Elaine says and get them back into the mud ASAP.

Done - back in the muck. I poked around the other pot and it feels like the same thing. No tubers.

Yeah, I think it takes big leaves to make a tuber. I just scrolled up, and you started those seeds in April, so they really had a fairly short season to grow. You could give them a boost early by putting the tubs on a seed starting mat to help warm the water early. Water needs to get into the 70's before they start putting up leaves. As soon as you see leaf shoots, get them in the sun!

Give 'em lots of fert next year, maybe you could even start with a few trowels-full of manure/compost, since you're growing them in tubs with no fish. Grow some fabulous leaves, and you'll for sure have tubers by next fall. The leaves alone are worth growing the plant, they're so pretty. Water rolls around on them like mercury, the leaf surface is 'unwettable'. It's really fun to watch.

There was a really good program on Georgia Public TV a while back, it was Your Southern Garden, and they featured the lotus pots at the Bamboo Farm in Savannah. I have seen the pots and they are large, in the 40 to 50 gallon range. The horticulturist mentioned fertilizing them every week because the water gets so hot and they use up food quickly. I have not tried that yet but I have fed mine every two weeks and I did see an improvement in the number of leaves and flowers. They were fertilizing through October but I stopped back in early September when the leaves started dying down.

I came across this thread searching for an answer to my lotus question. I bet someone who has posted here knows the answer, though. I started a lotus from seed I collected on the shore of Lake Marion where here are big fields of the native yellow ones.

I'm certain it will be too big for my pond, but it occurred to me that perhaps the size can be controlled by sinking it within a smaller container? Would that work? The pond is only about 4 ft by 3ft and about 2 feet deep.

I had ordered a dwarf variety from someone on line and it was sent bare-root with no water or moisture material and was pretty dead, so I resorted to trying seeds - which worked!
Deb

PS/ X, how did yours do over the winter(s)? :D

Hey Deb!

Mine got to the coin stage over wintered nicely and faded away in the Summer. Don't know why.

Last year my lotus, which had always been outstanding, fizzled out. I gave the roots to a friend with a real pond to see if she had any better luck with them. This year I started out with new roots, from a reputable dealer, and they too have been underwhelming. I have not seen a flower yet and the leaves are already dying off.
I wish I had some kind of explanation, this is the first time in many years that I had trouble with lotus, it is usually just the opposite. I have consuted with two different growers andneither had any idea what is going on. Seems to be the coastal SC curse and it is driving me crazy.

Hmmm! That is concerning. ...
Mine just has its first leaf today. :) I'm trying not to fuss with it too much and just keep my fingers crossed.

I had a dwarf variety that bloomed nicely in June and July the first year, then leafed out, and fizzled out the next as well. Turns out my pond doesn't get enough sunlight to make them bloom all summer, so that wasn't the plant's fault,

Btw, the grower I ordered mine from only ships lotus in the early spring. Texas Waterlilies, I'd highly recommend them. Everything I've had from them has done great. Well, except the lotus did not live past 2 years.

Maybe your native variety will be more disease/pest resistant, let's hope. No idea if you can keep it smaller by confining it, but they are lusty growers, make big tubers, and I'd think you would need to roust the pot out and divide the tubers out each fall so that they didn't crowd themselves too much.

Confining them might cause them to not bloom, too. But the leaves are gorgeous.

Hi all, I've a tube tub for several years now. It isn't declining over the years. But, this year because I don't have the right fertilizer (aquatic fertilizer) for them; I've had only one flower blooming each time. This is my 3rd flower for the season.

And I concur, these type of flower do need full sun to have flower.



This message was edited Aug 6, 2013 2:01 PM

My lotus are growing in the same conditions they always have. Some of my roots came from Texas Waterlilies and some from Perry's Water Gardens in NC. When they failed last year I changed to soil for this year but the fresh soil did not work.

These are pictures from several years ago, the third picture is of the only flowers I *almost* had this year. They just dried up before they opened.

Beautiful flowers and photos of them Lily and Ardesia! My pond only gets 1/2 day sun, so I may have to get a big tub for my little one - if it makes it. So far - so good!