Water Gardening: My lotus flower's gone by, 1 by darlindeb

darlindeb wrote:
Yupe, 3 days is about it for the bloom. I've always had better luck with my lotus in full sun.
My experience is they do better with bloom production when they are fed fertilizer. I use aquatic fertilizer; however, some people break up fruit tree spikes and use that. I think they also get bigger in size each year. Most people I think divide theirs about every 3rd to 5th year.

I didn't have any luck over wintering some in pots (these were the larger pots not the shallow wide pots) in a garage. Mine just rotted. Do you have a pond? I don't know how deep you have to be to beat the frost where you are. I'm about 6b zone and I need about 2 feet pond depth for things to survive. I have had success in less depth, but I think that's what one of the "experts" recommended to me years ago. You might also call the place you bought it from and see what they suggest.

I have heard of people insulating the pots (the bigger pots) with hay on the side and on top and covering with plastic. I haven't tried it that way though. I have harvested the tubers in fall after the folage has died back, rinsed the tubers and used a fungicide and stored in damp (not wet peat moss) in plastic garbage bags inside big coolers. I had the cooler in the garage. The first time I did that all the tubers made it. The next time I tried it I lost a few tubers to rot. Fungicide can be toxic to fish so I wouldn't try this method if you are going to put the lotus in a pond with koi or goldfish.

It's a lovely bloom. What is the name of the lotus in the photo?

Here is a photo of lotus tubers I harvested. These are all from the same pot. You can see there is a wide difference in the size of tubers even though they are all the same variety.