Dying water lilies

[wolf22t]

As the title says i have two water lilies and they are both dying. From two flower buds on each it dropped to one on each and now there are none. There are two possible causes i think. Firstly the shade cloth covers the lilies for part of the day. The second is i just repotted them and they seem to have gotten worse since i did that. Please help me i would love to know why they are dying.Also the leaves that are going brown are covered with slime on all the brown bits of the leaf

Heres a picture before i put the shade up and before i changed their pots
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/wolf22t/000_00451.jpg?t=1168576875


And here is what they look like now
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/wolf22t/000_00741.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/wolf22t/000_00751.jpg

Any help would be appreciated
:help:

[fresh_newby]

They were beautiful!
Do you have them in pots and sunken, or are they planted directly into a substrate on the pond floor?

Nevermind I think I see them in pots, but with a gravel base.
Are they being fertilized in the pot's base?

[wolf22t]

They are in pots and sunken. I was told from the water garden i got them from to place them in pots without drain holes so thats what i did. They are basically in 15litre buckets for each lily. I was also told to put a small amount of blood and bone mixed with dynamic lifter at the bottom of the pot bellow the clean mud or soil

[fresh_newby]

They need to be planted into large aquatic baskets in a heavy clay loam, but only at half their final depth to begin with. Gradually introduce them to deeper water as their leaves get established on the surface. Beware that generally, the cheaper water lilies are, the more vigorous they are. But even the most vigorous types will need a feed of slow release fertiliser or bonemeal pellets to get them going. They can be planted at any time from late spring onwards, as long as there is strong growth from a strong plant. Weaker specimens need to be nurtured on later in the season.

Keep them away from fountains and waterfalls as disturbed or flowing water upsets their growth.

I would look into the aquatic baskets...and place them on an upsidedown pot so that they aren't so deep so fast. It requires gradual depth introduction.

[wolf22t]

Ok well i guess i will have to do that, is there any fertilizer you would recommend that wont kill my fish. I dont really want to pay big bucks for an aquatic fertilizer tab or the likes

[fresh_newby]

get the bonemeal pellets...they will not harm fish...

[wolf22t]

How much should i put for each plant, what size should the pot be and do u think i need holes or slits in it, do u think i overdid the fertilizer causing burns, the one plant didnt change depth at all so i dont think that is the cause, is bonemeal similar to blood and bone,

This is a pic illustrating where the plants are in relation to the waterfall and the fountain do u think it could be affecting it
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/wolf22t/000_00451-1.jpg

[wolf22t]

Oh by the way thanks for the quick reply m8 :)

[fresh_newby]

They hate current, so perhaps you may want to move them back where they were...
blood/bone is similar... that is fine
They need at least 5 hours a day of sun, and most importantly, they need a breathable pot. A pulp pot or something of the like...it looks like the ones they are in now are just regular plastic pots. Go to your pond or garden store and look for pulp pots or breathable aquatic pots and transplant them.

[libbylibbylibby]

One thing that I have noticed with the variety of lilly you have there is that they really do not like the distubance of being repotted (but I also agree with the other folks in this thread that a porus pot of some sort (even if you just drill holes, and lots of them, into the pot you have).

At the times when I have had to repot my lilly of this type, it has taken it quite some time to recover and begin blooming again. One thing it took me a long time to understand with pond keeping was that the pots that the lillies and other water plants are in don't need to look "neat and tidy". Its what you see above the water that is most important. Distubance by too frequent repotting is somethign to be avoided. Attached is a pic from my pond of what I think is the same variety of lilly you have.

[Beasts]

A few thoughts;
-If you can do without the shade cloth the lilies would be much happier. Was your pond overheating?
-As long as their leaves are resting on the surface the planting depth in the pond is not too deep.
-Lilies definitely need pots with many holes in them to allow water circulation and keep the roots healthy.
-I'm sitting here in the middle of a snow storm and you have the nerve to post pictures of warm and sunny!!
-Try to transplant lilies when they are dormant, if you can in that, apparently, warm year round climate you live in.
-Try not to worry too much. Lilies, in my experience, are pretty tough and will recover as long as your water conditions are good and the neighborhood muskrats don't dig them up.
Beasts

[wolf22t]

Thanks for all the replies people, the reason why i put the shade cloth up was to try and keep the water from going green from too much sun,

should i cut the leaves that are going brown, do u think i should re pot them now or will that most likely kill them off altogether, could something be eating my leaves cause they seem to have chunks taken out of the edges and would that kill the leaf

All the leaves that are going brown have a fairly thick layer of slime on all the brown bits. Could this be a disease or is it normal for dying leaves to go slimy

[coupedefleur]

Well, this is one of those contradictory information things, unless it's a difference between hardy and tropical lilies. I've read that they don't want something with holes in it- the reason they're sold that way is that they are being raised in something close to hydroponic conditions.

Mine do really well in a hole-less pot, with composted chicken manure and cheap aquatic flower tabs in the bottom, with a layer of hartz ph5 cat litter over that, and gravel or sand on top. You want the nutrients to stay in the pot.

When I pull my hardy lilies in the fall, the pots are a solid mass of roots and I have to divide them up into new plants, so they're doing really well with this style of culture.

[Beasts]

So, somebody needs to do an experiment - pots with holes, pots w/o holes in the same environment. In the meantime, coupedefleur, do your pots not even have drain holes in the bottom? And why do you "pull" your lilies in the fall? Is your pond too shallow for them to winter over outside? Are your lilies tropicals? Are you just pulling, transplanting and then replacing or do you bring them inside? I am also in NW Ohio. Our pond is .6 acre and all of the plants overwinter in the pond but the planting areas are at least 24 inches deep and, therefore, do not freeze to the root area. The lilies and lotuses which I have planted directly in the clay substrate are spreading and flowering vigorously.
wolf22t, the better your lilies grow the less algae you will have. Emergent plants especially compete very well with algae. Certain lilies suffer if their leaves are removed before they are completely dead. Check to see whether the damage is occuring before or after the leaves start dying. In my experience most damage occurs after the leaves become unhealthy but that also depends on which herbivore you happen to be coping with. That brown and the slime are probably symptoms as opposed to a cause - an infection attacking a weakness. If you choose to use the "holey" pot method could you just drill a few holes in the existing pots? If you do, just remember that whole water and electricity thing!!! Pull the pots out of the water and away from the pond before drilling!
Beasts

[wolf22t]

Well the last two posts raise very good points,

1.)the debate about holes or no holes
From what i have heard the reason for drain holes is for exactly what the name suggests, it drains excess water out of the pot. Now in a pond theres not much point of that especially if you have fertilizer at the base which may get washed out into the water. Like i said thats what i have heard so its still a debate to me. Now that said why do they have lily pots like this which clearly state lily basket
Basket (http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://the-plant-directory.com/store/images/lily-basket.jpg&imgrefurl=http://the-plant-directory.com/store/index.php%3Fmain_page%3Dindex%26cPath%3D80&h=210&w=200&sz=13&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=imPVNjvZRdEiXM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=101&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwater%2Blily%2Bbasket%26svnum%3D10%26 hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN)

Placing a water lily in a basket
The traditional container for a water lily is a plastic mesh basket, lined with hessian or sacking and filled with good quality soil. The newer louvre baskets have very fine slits instead of hessian. This is done to minimize soil loss in the water.

A different site also had lily pots but these had no holes in them
Lily pot (http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://64.224.96.217/ShopSite/media/conler167.jpg&imgrefurl=http://64.224.96.217/ShopSite/plantsupplies.html&h=84&w=150&sz=2&hl=en&start=67&tbnid=eJ6zmNcufuxhxM:&tbnh=54&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwater%2Blily%2Bpot%26start%3D54%26nds p%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff %26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN)



2) The damage occurring before or after they are yellowing or dieing
Well the damage is also on leaves that are green and look healthy i have been trying to see if there is something eating the leaves with no luck. Could it be the fish eating the leaves

More :read: to come i guess

Oh and by the way i think they are getting worse by the day so i might have nothing to lose repoting them again soon i will see if there is any improvement in the next few days. When you repot your lily do you wash all the soil off (or shake it off) the root or just put it in the pot how it is.

[wolf22t]

Another interesting pot i just found, take a look at the pics of a Water Lily Pot with Integral Feeding Tube
Click Here (http://www.kissingfrogs.tv/lilypots.html)

I might give it a go with one of my dieing lilies and see if it recovers.

[coupedefleur]

coupedefleur, do your pots not even have drain holes in the bottom? And why do you "pull" your lilies in the fall? Is your pond too shallow for them to winter over outside? Are your lilies tropicals? Are you just pulling, transplanting and then replacing or do you bring them inside? I am also in NW Ohio.

No drain holes- I'm actually using plastic dishpans for the lilies because they get too big for pots, and it's not easy to find pots without holes.
For now, my ponds are temporary ones, so I empty them out and put the plants in an unheated cellar that gets pretty cold. Eventually I'd like a much larger pond, but the bedrock is about 6" down in most spots, so it's not easy to dig a deep pond. When they built the house they blasted out the basement with explosives.

In case you missed it, there's a new FW+SW club in the area. Come to a meeting!

www.traccentral.org

[Beasts]

When I repot my lilies I take a sharp edged shovel to the root mass to split it up and transfer each piece, with the attached dirt, to a new pot with added dirt from the pond substrate. With everything that has been said, especially regarding success with pots without holes, I think I would look elsewhere for the source of your problems. How long were the leaves out of water when you brought the plants home? Have you checked your water parameters?
coupedefleur, you have quite a different problem from the area we are in. We have to dig ponds in order to use the clay to raise the house above the level of the water table! Ponds are almost a necessity.
Beasts

[wolf22t]

I noticed today that i had little green bugs on the leaves, they are almost impossible to see until you get really close, does anyone know what they may be . I was leaning towards aphids but im not sure and they are too small to get a decent pic of. Could these little buggers be destroying my lilies and if yes what can i do about it. The best solution i have found is trying to knock them into the drink for fish food but they are jumpy as hell :mad2:

[toan]

i think it's just because it's winter, unless i'm missing something. should come back in the spring.

[wolf22t]

Well the watergarden which is about a 20minute drive from my house has about 60 flowering lilies right now and some which are the same kind as mine. I think one of them is recovering a flower just sprouted from the water. It was aphids i did some searching on the net and found pictures of the same bug. Im not entirely blaming them but i dont think they helped matters. I think i stuffed up somewhere along the repotting line. Still unsure what though :confused:

[PHPong]

I have many hardy water lilies. I plant in garden soil and use pond tabs for fertilizer. I use pots not baskets. But not everything works for everybody. I think they will probably be okay unless you burn't them with fertilizer. And sometimes we just loose some lilies no matter what we do.

[toan]

Where are you located?

your pond looks relatively small, and it's not the same as a 20,000 gal pond.

[wolf22t]

Im located in NSW Australia

[Desertponder]

O.k., looking at your pics, you're water lily most likely isn't dieing. Lily buds sometimes do not open and will drop back under the water and die. This can happen if the plant was repotted when the buds were in the beginning stages of forming or even moved from one location to another. Lilies just do this from time to time, its usually a sign that the plant is using its resources to protect the tuber rather than expend the energy on the flower. Once the plant establishes it will start producing buds again.
The pads naturally age and turn brown and waste away and new pads will be coming up all the time. When pads start fading away you can pinch them off at the base of the stem near the tuber to keep them from adding decomposed matter to your pond.
The lily in your pic looks like it is possibly Attraction? This lily does not do real well in dry hot temps so that could also be part of the problem. Many of the red lilies do not do well in dry hot heat.
Also, check the underside of the pads for extremely tiny clear worms. They are VERY tiny and they will be squirming around very fast. If you see these, they are feasting on the pads. You will need to prune badly infested pads and hose of the others. Keep doing this daily until you no longer see worms.

I would not recommend using the aquatic baskets. They are too flimsy and usually turn brittle and break easily. It is difficult to use fertilizer in these baskets as it just leeches out into the water.

I'm a firm believer in that you will have to experiment with potting techniques that will work well in your pond. As mentioned before, one technique one ponder uses does not always mean it works for the next ponder.
As far as pots go, you need something more wide and flat. Oil drain pans, dish pans etc. make good pots. I don't put holes in my pots. I repot and divide every fall. For soil I use a combination of a clay/sand top soil mix that my Home Depot sells and I add a little more sand to it. I then top the pots with a good layer of pea gravel. I have found that this works best for my lilies and conditions. I have tried using kitty litter, the bagged aquatic soil, straight pea gravel and even my own garden dirt but with little success but others have good success with all of these.
Lilies are also heavy feeders. You need to fertilize them regularly through the growing season. You can get pond plant fertilizer tabs, Jobes tomato spikes, or fruit tree spikes. I use tomato spikes at the rate of one spike per pot every 30 days. If you use fruit tree spikes you can bust them up with a hammer into smaller pieces and push a piece down in the soil every 30-45 days. You can also use Osmocote for flowers in the bottom of a closed pot when you repot the plant. Many lily growers use this method once a year so they don't have to fertilize monthly.

Water lilies are one of my passions. I'm not much into the fish aspect of ponds but I do love my lilies. Hopefully, some of this info will be helpful to you.:dance2:

BTW......the pond looks great!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SASHABEAR/Water%20Lilies/CA3.jpg

[wolf22t]

Hey m8 great reply, thanks for all that info. I basically had to cut the remaining leaves off it as they got eaten up and were decaying etc. If i had to prune off pretty much everything will the lily start growing normally again and whats the reason for small pads and even small flowers appearing. I read that this may be a sign that the plant needs splitting. Is this right . Once again thanks for the info.

[Desertponder]

If you had to trim all the pads off, new ones should be coming up to replace them.
Small pads and flowers could mean numerous things. It may need fertilizer, it may be a young/small tuber, it may be a small variety of lily, it may need repotted.:dance2:

[wolf22t]

Ok m8 thanks u have been a great help. Cheers

[Reddog80p]

winter sucks, can't wait till spring!