Moving waterlilies to a deeper pond?

In my small pond, which is in full sun, I have 3 waterlilies that are growing/blooming gangbusters this year. So much so that they're covering the surface of the pond and we have a hard time seeing the fish. My larger pond only gets about 3 hours of sun, max, and the lilies in there are growing much slower, of course. I accept the fact that they will probably never bloom if they stay in there, but we like the foliage, so we're OK with that. My questions are: although the larger pond is considerably deeper, can I rotate the lilies back and forth, so 1) I can have occasional bloom in the shaded pond, and, most importantly, 2) I can cut down on the amount of leaf cover on the one in full sun?

Thanks!
Barbara

Hmmm. Moving the "shallow" lilies to the deep pond would be no problem but I dont know about moving the deep lilies to the shallow pond.

You could simply thin out the pads...might slow down your bloom but I dont think it would hurt the lilies unless you get too carried away. Best case is to have smaller dwarf lilies in the smaller pond.

Thinning out the pads was going to be my fall-back position, LOL. Just for curiosity, what would be the downside of moving the deep lilies to the shallow pond?

Thanks!
Barbara

Barbara...I'm not sure there would be a down side but I know that if I put lilies in water that is deeper than usual. The pads dont reach the surface that first day but quickly shoot up to float on the surface.

If you move lilies with Longer stems (from deeper water) to shallower water....I dont know if it will affect lily health but at the least it will cause the lily to spread out farther from the lily pot - because it has longer stems to begin with - and therefore take up more room -which you are trying to reduce. :)

Probably no harm to try... no harm in doing some pad reduction either. You might try using lilies with more interesting leaf patterns in the shadier pond and lilies with smaller spread in the sun one. :)

Good points, Charlotte. Thank you!

Barbara

I groom my waterlilies regularly and it has not affected blooming that I have noticed. Usually I take no more than 1/4 of the leaves and usually those are the ones that are yellowing. The problem you might run into is the lily pads are shading your water and keeping the water clear. If you remove the plants you risk having pea soup water.


"It's always something"
Rosanna Rosannadana

This message was edited Jun 24, 2005 1:53 PM