Dying water lilies

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
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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

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



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.
 
Another interesting pot i just found, take a look at the pics of a Water Lily Pot with Integral Feeding Tube
Click Here

I might give it a go with one of my dieing lilies and see if it recovers.
 
Beasts said:
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.
Click to expand...

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