Water lilies are an excellent addition to water gardens with mesmerizing blooms that add a beautiful focal point to your aquatic oasis. Now that spring equinox is here, it is a rewarding time to revisit your water gardens and check in on your water lilies. Water lilies are also great in keeping the ecosystem of a pond balanced, providing shade to prevent algae growth and shelter for fish. Here is what you need to know about caring for them including varieties, feeding and how and when to repot for optimal bloom potential.
Water lilies can be found in two varieties: Hardy and tropical. Hardy lilies can tolerate colder temperatures and tropicals do well in warmer climates like the subtropics here on Kauai. Both beautiful in their own right; tropical lilies are more fragrant, have more color varieties including jewel-tones of blue, purple, yellow, white, and pink and tend to bloom year-round. Hardy lilies have thicker, smoother, and rounder leaves and the flowers tend to be in the pastel pink and yellow color palette and sit closer the water surface. Think Monet paintings. Tropical lily blooms rise up around 4-6” above the pond’s surface and have a lot more color variation.
Hardy lilies grow across the pot in a long bumpy rhizome that resembles a pinecone while tropical lilies grow vertically up the center of the pot, which is important to know when repotting.
Now that spring is upon us, repotting your lilies will help them have a robust growing season, encouraging those coveted blooms. Give them plenty of sun, feed them lily fertilizing tabs once per month by pushing it into the dirt close to the edge of the pot, and prune yellow leaves and spent blooms to give your plant what it needs to thrive.
Repotting water lilies should happen every 6-9 months preferably in late spring and early fall and avoided in November. Checking in with your water lily by pulling it up out of the water is a good way to determine if it is time to repot.
It is time to repot your water lily if:
-It is Spring and your lily is waking up
-Your lily is struggling, and you need to investigate
-The rhizome or roots are growing out of the pot or pushing out of the dirt
-Your lily has multiple growth crowns popping up
-you think your lily may be dead
-the dirt smells rancid or “off”
-it is not November
How to repot:
Take the pot and gently tip it upside down. Separate the dirt and the plant, shaking off any excess dirt from the roots. Cut off any soft or decaying rhizome or bulb – leaving at least one growing tip to replant. Remove any extra bulbs or corms and discard, using only the mother plant. Trim anchor roots down to 6”.
Start fresh. Scoop dirt, filling 1/3 of the pot. Place one fertilizer tablet (one per one gallon pot) and cover with layer of strata. Strata is a porous clay gravel available for sale at Garden Ponds. Add another layer of dirt and then in the case of a hardy lily, place the rhizome with the growing tip pointing towards the center of the pot and cover the roots with dirt, leaving the growing tip above the dirt. In the case of a tropical lily, place the plant at the center, and cover the roots with dirt – being sure not to cover the crown of the plant with dirt. Top dress with strata and place gently back into the pond 12-18” deep in a sunny location.
Join us in celebrating Spring with our annual Water Lily Repotting Party! The first week of April we will re-pot any one-gallon water lily for you for free. Put your lily in a bag or a bucket and bring it in to Garden Ponds from 12 noon until 5pm Wednesday March 31st to Sunday April 4, 2021 and we will repot for you! Any additional repot is always available for a $15 charge. Garden Ponds is located beside the Kaua’i Mini Golf in Kilauea. We are open Wednesday to Sunday 12-5pm and you can visit our website at gardenpondskauai.com or call us at 808-828-6400 for more information.
