How to Grow a Lotus Plant

Wednesday, 14 August 2013

Here's a blog post that i should have published back in 2012.  I had started writing it over a year ago and never got around to finishing it.  So i figured that i might as well finish writing it and post it now.

Firstly here's the links to me making the pond and growing the banana tree:
Homemade Concrete Pond and Waterfall 
Grow a Banana Tree in Cold Climate

Before i could put the lotus plants outside i started them indoors.  I used a 5 gallon fish tank with a filter, air pump, heater and light.  The hotter the better, lotus plants seem to grow best when the temperature is near 90 degrees.

This is what the first leaves in fish tank looked like.

Then back in March of 2012 the weather got really nice and temperatures went up to 75 degrees. So i figured it would be a perfect time to move all of my plants outside. I had 3 buckets of mud and water in the basement with my lotus tubers in them. My banana tree was growing slowly in my dining room all year and i had a new bamboo tree that was growing great in my indoor greenhouse.

Here's everything moved outside.


I refilled the buckets that had been sitting in the basements.


This is where i left them off last year, in the basement:  Keep Dormant Lotus Lilly Pad Plant

I think the reason why i never finished writing this blog post is because of what happened that year.  When i moved the buckets from the basement to the backyard, the plants started started sending up leaves when it got warm, but then got really cold and they died.  Luckily the lotus plants survived but the banana tree wasn't as lucky. 

It later warmed up into the 70's and i started seeing small leaves again.

So it was at this point that they were ready to put into the pond.  I took my time digging out lotus tubers, but i still broke some. it was really muddy and the tubers are super delicate.

In the process some of the leaves broke off from the roots and died

But here's what it looked like with them all transplanted into their own buckets.  I added stone on top to keep down the mud.  This was still back in 2012 when Karrie and i had just finished painting the pond blue.  It looked great then with the clean water.

And last year everything turned out great.  The lotus's grew well in their own buckets and having room in the pond for them to spread out their leaves helped.  They weren't confined to the small buckets and were able to send up aerial leaves.

Like before the hotter the better, when it got up to 90 degrees they were growing fast.  Then one day i went out side to look at the plants and saw this.

I remember reading how the first flower always comes up really close to a main leaf. That's exactly how it was growing, about 2 inches from one of the largest aerial leaves.  Then this is a few weeks later, it sent up another flower from the same plant.

Here's what it looked like opened up, probably 8" across.

This was just a grasshopper that landed on it one day.

After all the petals of the flower fell off, the center of the flower continued to grow.  This is the seed pod that i found back in the very beginning.

The bummer news is that this past winter i took those 3 buckets and put them in the basement.  I tried my best to keep them wet but they ended up drying out.  Actually some time in the middle of February they sent up shoots, but then died.  I was hoping that i could just put them back in the pond this year, but it seems like they didn't make it.  

I guess that i'll have to start them from a seed every year, or else find a better method for keeping them alive.  Maybe i'll just leave them in the pond and hope they don't freeze solid.

comments | | Read More...

How to Grow a Lotus Plant Indoors from a Seed

Monday, 27 February 2012

Taking everything i learned from last year:
American Lotus
Sprouting Lotus Seeds
Lotus in the Sun
Final Lotus of the Year

I'm trying to grow some lotus plants inside again this winter. But rather than a big pot with mud i figured i could try placing them in clear plastic cups inside of a fish tank. That way i could see how the tubers or roots are growing too.

The 3 keys to growing them:
Heat - underwater heater, stays right around 88 degrees
Sun - by the window and grow light
Humidity - Saran wrap over tank

Here's the setup. There are 2 Asian Lotus seeds and 2 American Lotus seeds.
I think it took about 5 days for them to break through the seed shell, and 4 days to grow to this point. The Asian Lotus seeds sprouted first.
The roots starting to form.
A week and a half later they had grown quite a bit bigger.

Several leaves.
The first tuber and more roots.

Second tuber a week later, so it appears to still be growing.

We'll see if they continue to grow or die like the many others that i tried growing indoors.

comments | | Read More...

American Lotus

Thursday, 6 January 2011

A few months ago i was working down at the coal burning Consumers Energy power plant near the Michigan-Ohio border. They are actually just north of North Maumee Bay and use the lakes water for cooling.
There's lots of weeds, cattails and other plants in the protected cove. The power plant also has a huge net and "fish trap" to keep their pipes clear of debris. One day i saw thousands and thousands of little 4" fish, shad i think, that had completely filled the hanging metal basket.

In September i was there and in the bay there were these huge lillypads, they looked to be 3 feet in diameter. You can see that they took up half the channel.
I took this picture with my cell phone. In early November, that month the fog seemed to stay there every morning.

Later in the year around November, all of the lillypads were gone and these brown, round floating things with seeds in them were in their place...and lots of trash because it's Lake Erie.
At the time i wasn't sure exactly what they were but i liked them and brought home a handful of seeds. I found out later that the plant and seed pod were from the American Lotus.

I then read that:

• It's the only native lotus species to the U.S. and Canada

• Native Americans used to eat the seeds and rhizomes (roots)

• The plant is a good "indicator" species and only grows in clean water. They also like the warmer waters around places like power plant discharge pipes. Turns out that the Consumer Energy power plant is actually one of the places that Monroe's Lotus Garden Club (how much do i NOT want to hang out with that group) visits each year.

• Lillypads can be 1ft - 3ft in diameter

• The white and yellow flower can be 10" in diameter

• In Michigan it is listed as a "threatened" plant, it's "endangered" in some states, and Connecticut has it on their "invasive plant list" because of it's ability to crowd out other plant species. I can see why from this picture taken somewhere down south.

I also learned that lotus seeds have special enzymes, which allow them to last for hundreds and even thousands of years. In Tokyo they found seeds that were buried deep in mud and carbon dating showed that they were over 2,000 years old. The scientists planted them and they grew.

The only trick is that lotus seeds need to have their shell scarified, or roughened up. If the outer shell is not rubbed or cracked in some way nothing will happen.

So here's a few of the seeds i found.
Here's what they looked like after i filed through the outer shell.
I tried growing them in 2 different ways. The first was by placing them in a wet paper towel then putting that in a plastic zip-lock bag. I laid the bag over a heat vent to get it nice and warm.

The second way was to simply drop them in a cup of warm water. You can see two of the seeds floated and probably won't grow.
We'll see how they turn out. After two days i haven't seen any change.

comments | | Read More...