How to grow lotus & Waterlilies..?
Lotus and waterlilies are the most admirable flowers. They grow only in water bodies. Lotus plants can be grown in two ways. One by collecting its tuber/rhizomes from nearby Lotus pond or through the fellow gardeners who are already growing them and from the nearby plant nurseries. The other way around is by sowing Lotus seeds. Lotus plants keeps spreading the area with suckers/runners around them. For growing lotus plants choose wide pots with minimum of 12 to 24 inch in depth and 24 to 30 inch of width pots with no holes at all.
Prepare a potting soil with mixture of well decomposed manure, red/ black Soil with sand in 1:3:1 ratio. Fill this mixture in pots to 9 to 10 inch height. Fill the water up to soil height and mix it thoroughly to make it slurry. Get healthy rhizomes of minimum 1 foot in length. Place them horizontally on the slurry and press gently into the soil by placing tips of the leaves upwards. Place some stones on the plants so that the plants wont get float when filled with water. Fill the container with water slowly and leave it . Generally Lotus plants will come for blooming post rainy seasons. As told above Lotus plants keeps on spreading. So propagation can be done through suckers.
soil.
If you are starting from lotus seeds. Rub the seeds on both the ends slightly by using the file or on a sandpaper till the black layer goes off and a brown/white layer appears on the seed. Soak the seeds in a bowl of water and place them in semi-shade areas such as near by Window/Balcony. Keep changing water regularly and you can see seeds sprouting after 3 to 5 days of soaking. Take a pot which doesn’t have holes at its bottom. Fill the pot with black/red soil, well decomposed manure in 2:1 ratio and sow the seeds in it. Cover the surface of the soil with some sand and place the medium-sized garden stones around the plant so that the seeds won’t get float on water.
What ever the approach you followed either by collecting lotus rhizomes or Lotus seeds. Once after planting, place the entire setup in a sunny location where it gets maximum sunlight all the day. Fill the container with water up to its neck and keep maintain the water level. Growing Lotus plants from suckers/rhizomes is quick and easier way than from seeds.
Where as waterlilies can be grown only from suckers/runners/saplings/rhizomes grown from the mother plant. Potting soil and growing conditions are the same which we mentioned above for lotus plants. Both of these plants need water and full of sunlight. Feeding them with nutrients for every 1month helps plant to grow well and gives more flowers.
Highlights: Lotus plants can be grown in two ways. One by collecting its tuber/rhizomes from nearby Lotus pond or through the fellow gardeners who are already growing them. The other way around is by sowing seeds. Lotus plants keeps spreading the area with suckers/runners around them. For growing lotus plants choose wide pots with minimum of 12 to 24 inch in depth and 24 to 30 inch of width pots with no holes at all.
Note: Information given in this website is purely based on our own experiences in home gardening and it’s not compulsory to follow. Planting and growing plants may differ based on climate, soil, water, and care. Please check with your local horticultural department for more information on growing Plants.
