How to Grow Water Lilies

Water lilies must have a minimum of five hours of direct sunlight daily in order to bloom heavily; the more sun, the better

Fertilize your water lilies at least once monthly. They would prefer twice a month. There are several brands of lily fertilizer and they are all OK.

Water lily flowers open each morning and close each night unless they are night bloomers which do the opposite. The flowers live about three days and die. Pick it off at the base when it dies. As the pads yellow and die, pick those off at the base as well. The outer ring of pads dies first.

Place your water lily pot as deep as you can in your pond. They like to have the top of their pots at least 6" below the water surface. I put them at the bottom of the pond....at least 18" below the surface.

Pot up water lilies in wide, shallow containers rather than thin and deep ones. Dish pans are good, but they really would like to have a perforated pot, so water can flow through the soil.

If you have a natural bottom pond and plant a hardy water lily in the bottom, soon you will have a pond covered with water lilies, choked with water lilies. There is no way to remove them except to rake them out. And they will return in the spring. Planting them in pots does delay the take-over for a few months, but they will take over. And you will be writing to me asking how to kill them. Remember you put them there and watched them grow.

Learn more from my book,  A Practical Guide to Building and Caring for your Pond.  You can download it here

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