Water Gardening: Lotus are blooming!!!, 1 by snapple45

snapple45 wrote:
Well, after taking a humble bow, I have to tell you it is fairly easy. I bought this tuber locally last spring because I had read that it was the best selling lotus. It was already potted in a 12' tub (enclosed bottom and sides). The tuber itself was about 8". It flowered. I used tablet fertilizer last year about 4 times and otherwise left it alone except to cut back the dead stuff when it began to go dormant. I left it in the pond over the winter in 2 ft. of water. I put a piece of plastic fencing over the pot to keep the koi from rooting it into oblivion over the winter.

In late March I hauled it up and repotted the entire root/tuber mass into a 24" tub using WM kitty litter. It had just broken dormancy. I put my hands under the plant mass and lifted it out in one peice, being very careful not to break the single leaf coming up because that was the growing point. I set the whole thing into the new tub already partially filled with wet kitty litter, added a little more kitty litter, and a Laguna fertilizer stake that feeds all season. After fastening plastic fencing with 1" holes completely over the top of the pot DH and I maneuvered it back into the pond into the 2 ft level. That was the hardest part. Twenty five lbs. of soaked kitty litter is really hard to handle. I had to get into the pond in 50 degree water. I havn't done a thing since. That whole plant is coming out of that 24" tub. Next spring it's either divide the tuber or go for a 36" tub.