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.

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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.

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Final Lotus of the Year

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Well as of right now the lotus plants are in the basement for the winter.

I didn't want the roots to freeze so i brought them inside. When it warms up enough in the spring i'll take them back out.
Here's what i have previously written about trying to grow them:
Sprouting Lotus Seeds
Lotus Update
Lotus in the Sun

Anyway going back a few months ... I was down near the Ohio border again for work and saw the lotus fields. Here they are in August, in a channel off of Lake Erie.
A view of all the lotus beds.
There were millions of them.
The view from the causeway.
A view of one of the rivers near a power plant to the north, flowing into Lake Erie.
Here's what the area looks like from above. The water is Lake Erie, the highway is I-75.
Back at my house the hot 90 degree summer days really made them grow big. The sun, heat and humidity outside caused them to take off. Here was one of my first aerial leaves before it opened up.
There were around four aerial leaves per pot.
The lotus effect on the leaf.

Some close-ups.

Back down near Monroe, Michigan i found a place where you can see them up close. It's visible from I-75 but you have to loop around to get there.

The leaves there grew much bigger then the ones in my backyard.
The seed pods which grew from the center of the flower.
By this time a lot of the seed pods had turned brown.
A couple of them broke off their stalks.
But there was a ton of them. If you figure that each seed pod has around 20 seeds on average, you can see how many seeds are here.

Although like i said earlier, seeds aren't the main way that these grow. They spread from the tubers in the mud, like how grass in your yard spreads.
Here they are in September. The leaves are turning brown and starting to go dormant.
The ones in Monroe had already turned brown.
This is right before i cut the leaves off, drained the water and moved them to the basement.
I'm expecting great things next spring. Hopefully all the energy is stored up in the tubers and will cause the plant to shoot up bigger then they grew from a seed this year.

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Lotus in the Sun

Monday, 20 June 2011

Well i know now what it takes to get them to grow. Abnormally warm Michigan weather. It's been very warm, it was even 90 degrees here for several days and the plants grew great.

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The best thing about having them outside is that the pads don't dry up and turn brown. Growing them outside is definitely the way to go. High heat/humidity and lots of sun. The water in the buckets got up to 80 degrees.
First though, let me go back. I originally learned about the American Lotus when working at the CE Power Plant in Monroe Michigan a year ago.
It has a bay next to the plant, which is part of Lake Erie.
The seeds were everywhere, i picked up a few over the course of 3 days.

This is what the bay looked like last year sometime around July or August. You can see the huge lotus bed.
Early this year. It's foggy there a lot.
A month and a half ago, still no signs of the lotus, but by now they are probably visible. The nets are used to stop plants and dead fish from getting into the turbines.
While i was there last year i saw some weird seed pods and grabbed a couple of seeds that had washed up. I tried growing the plant indoors during the winter, but it didn't go well. Here's what i've learned about trying to grow a lotus, inside, in Michigan, during the winter:

1. High heat - keep between 70-80 degrees, if it's too cold it slows down their growing. Heater, light. Not only for growing but also for starting the seed.

2. High humidity - don't let the leaf dry out once it reaches the surface, for me that meant covering the bowl with Saran wrap.

3. Let the roots start before planting in the mud - i noticed that if i put the seed and stem in the mud too early that the roots never started growing. But if i let the plant grow in a bowl of water the roots started fine. Then i was able to carefully transfer it to the mud.

4. Change the water frequently - i'm not sure if it's bacteria or algae but a white scum develops in the water during the first stages of growing.
Here's what i saw when i finally figured all of that out. If i planted the seed too early it would die. But if i waited till the roots grew an inch or two then planted it in mud it did ok.
I even checked the PH of the water. It's suppose to be between 6 and 8.
The plant will grow just in a bowl of water for several weeks. There's enough energy in the seed for it to develop roots and put up around 4 lilypads.
These were grown in just water.
This is what it looked like in March earlier this year. It was still too cold for the plants to start coming up. Although i could get them to start growing, they would turn brown and soon die.
Early this spring, on the way to the CE plant i got off I-75 at exit 11. There's another power plant on Lake Erie where the lotus plant grows right near the road. You can see last years stems in the water.

I already commented on what i thought about the lotus being protected here in Michigan. In Missouri, Rhode Island and other states it's a nuisance species, you can get fined for planting it. Here in Michigan it's protected, you get fined for taking it out. That's dumb.

Anyway, i found it very difficult to grow them inside during the winter. But since it warmed up and i moved the buckets outside they are doing way better. Outside now there is high humidity and high heat, the two things i was having problems with inside. I'll know by the end of summer how well they grew.

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