Help! Help! (Novice needs help with waterlilly)

We've pulled out the buckets that had waterlillies on one side of our watergarden--they were so crowded with pickerel that a person would not have known there were any lillies in there.

When we finally got the buckets out, some of them were so root-bound that the bottom half of the buckets were bone-dry (I kid you not!) even though the buckets had been submerged. Either those pickerel rush are quite assertive or the previous owners hadn't touched the water garden in a long, long time.

Anyhow, I was able to easily get some of the lillies out and re-pot them into those mesh baskets to breathe a little, but this one is bigger than any mesh basket I can find and I know it needs to be divided somehow--I read the 'how to' sections in all the books, but I'm still unsure and intimidated.

So, I decided I'd take a good picture and let the folks in Dave's Garden tell me exactly where to cut!

Here it is--I think it's going to be yellow like the others if it puts out blooms this summer--if not, I'll have to wait and find out next year.

Thanks for all your suggestions!
Teresa

Looking at your picture it appears that there are a lot of growth points. I have never been to particular about dividing, I just make sure that whatever section I cut apart has some roots and a couple of areas that show new growth. The hardies are very forgiving plants.

I went to the Dollar Store and bought colanders, little stacking milk crates, and small laundry baskets for larger water plants. They even come in black!

I went ahead and cut it just about at the 13" mark--just above the two green leaves.

After I cut it, I realized that there were lots of little mini-rhizomelets (for lack of scientific vocabulary!) just dropping off.

Should I pot them up, too? If I do, will they grow into large rhizomes eventually?

Thanks for the encouragement,
Teresa

Go ahead and pot them up if you have the room. They will grow just fine. I think the reason the growth points are fairly small is that they were very crowded in the old pot.