A little flat grecian urn, planted with a Baby Doll Lotus

Close up

Empty Planter, so you can see what it looks like. Lightweight fiberglass, found at a Xmas Tree Shoppe somewhere in Maine when we were on vacation.

When I first planted the Baby Doll, Gigi, my little Silky Terrier, helped

Sprouting...

Getting bigger!

Anyway, Momo Botan and Baby Doll are 2 dwarf lotus varieties that you can grown very happily in containers. Baby Doll is considered a 'Bowl' Lotus, which can take a smaller container, but no less than 5 gallons to be happy and have blooms all summer. Some people will argue and say you can grow it in a gallon container. Yup, you can! But you wont get many blooms, and it won't look anything like the happy plants in my photos! :) The grecian urn holds at least 10 gallons of dirt with about 1" of water over the surface.
I planted a few other marginals in there, like frogbit, Silk Stockings Saggitaria, and the little light pink bloomer is Siberian Pink Cups. (Baldellia ranunculoides)

Vanessa

Thanks, Sarah

Wow. I had never considered growing lotus before, but after your previous post (Joyce in the Lotus Jungle) and now this one, I'm thinking I'd like to have some lotus too. Thanks,Anne

Sarah, cold will not cause the tubers to rot.
I plant mine very early in the spring, and often the lotus tubs have thin coats of ice over them in the morning. Lotus are VERY hardy to cold. The only way you can kill a tuber is to freeze it solid...rock hard.
Lotus are not tropical...they are hardy through zone 4.
I plant mine in March, usually before March 15th...and they sit outside in their tubs up against the sunny side of the house on the patio. For WEEKS they are subjected to near freezing and light freezing night temps, and maybe getting in the 50s and 60s during the day until the end of April. April they start putting out little pads, and the REALLY get going by the end of May. By July they are blooming or in bud. :)

The best way I have rotted tubers was to start them indoors, where they do not get sufficient sunlight. In my experience, starting them indoors is a death sentence for lotus. Unless you have a greenhouse or a sunroom where the surface of the water is in the sun for at least 6 hours a day....you are asking for trouble....ROT.

Here is my planting method, which for me, gets blooms by mid summer through fall, no matter what kind of lotus you start with.
I fill my wine barrels about 3/4 with composted cow manure, but plain old compost can be used too. Before putting the compost in, put one cup of Osmocote (Veggie Formula) or Multicote (Veggie Formula) at the bottom (these are NOT your typical water soluable fertilizers...please read the entire label on the container to understand exactly how they work). I do NOT recommend any other kind of fertilizer with my lotus in a barrel planting method. You will NOT get the same results as I do unless you follow my instructions precisely: PLEASE NO SUBSTITUTING!
Gently lay the lotus tubers on top of the compost. (you can make a little depression and nestle the tuber into it) Then gently cover the tubers with about 1-2" of pea gravel, keeping the growing tips above the gravel. Gently, slowly add water until 3-4" of water covers the gravel. Then do nothing but top off the barrel(s) when the water gets low, and watch the lotus grow and bloom. DO NOT ADD ANY MORE FERTILIZER...at all. Osmocote and Multicote are time released, and will last through fall.

Remember, besides the Osmocote/Multicote, compost is LOADED with all sorts of micronutrients which your lotus will devour.
Regular potting soil or clay, or topsoil does NOT have all the micronutrients that compost has.
That is why composted cow manure is the best, with regular compost coming in second place.

I told Mom all about 'Momo Botan', and after she wiped the drool off the phone, she recalled that she has at least 2 half-whiskey barrels just waiting to be used, one for each of us. :D We're hoping to try them this year, and I have Joyce's lotus recipe clipped and saved. But where is the best place to buy them? Texas Waterlilies seems to have the best prices and good reputation. Also, here in California, when do you think the best time to order and plant would be?

Thanks for any help you can offer, ladies! :)

Brenda

Are these lotus full sized or dwarf? I'm considering doing a lotus container, but I'm not sure which variety works best in containers.

Vicki

In coastal California, you could probably order and plant lotus right now.

Sorry I've been out for a while.
Had surgery Monday, just feeling better now. :)

Joyce - I don't know the reason for your surgery, but I hope that you are doing well and recovering quickly.

Your Lotus containers are just simply stunning! Thank you so much for posting your special recipe for growing them in a container. I saw your Lotus photos a year or so ago and it inspired me to give it a try!

I grew out Baby Doll, Momo Botan, and Red Scarf from small tubers. All of them got aerial leaves, but no blooms. Hopefully this year I'll get blooms!

When I did your recipe, I goofed and used regular Osmocote time released fertilizer, not the veggie fertilizer. Oh well. The plants still did well, just no blooms. This year we shall see! I hope they look as lovely as yours do!

I have had 13 surgeries in less than 2 years, because of Breast Cancer. This includes several biopsies, a complete hysterectomy, a radical bilateral mastectomy and then reconstruction. For now, I am done. :)
I'm just not in the mood to go through any more unnecessary surgery.
But it goes to show you: Get your mammograms done yearly! If I hadn't skipped 2 years, I wouldn't have had to go through all this!

Remember, the bigger the container, the happier your lotus will be, and when they are happy....they bloom!
Good luck this year with blooms! :)

hightider, leave ALL your lotus outside.
They will rot in a heated room inside.
They need the winter chill to rest....they are NOT tropicals!
Please use punctuation too, I have a lot of trouble reading posts with no punctuation.

THANK YOU for your generous offer for some of your Siberian Pink Cups! They are just lovely with the Baby Doll Lotus!!! I believe we had this conversation a year or so ago and I never emailed you to follow-up. My loss!!! I won't forget this time! Thanks so much!

I think my Baby Doll Lotus is in too big of a pot. I believe the pot holds 15-20 gallons. It's pretty deep. I haven't had any luck finding a reasonably priced container like the flat bottom urn you have. They quit making the hose containers that were the perfect size. So I have had to resort to using the larger containers.

BTW: There is no such thing as a pot 'too big' for a lotus.
In fact, the more room it has the more blooms it will have. :)

Well, I hope that is true about a large pot being okay for a dwarf lotus. The plant sometimes looks like it is getting lost in the pot! I hope they all bloom this year. I have been waiting anxiously to see the flowers!

GO, JOYCE! Hope you're feeling better.
Sarah

Back to mammograms, my best friend was saved by one that detected tiny irregularities too small to be called lumps. She didn't have to go through near what you have because she caught it early. Still a trauma and, being a sculptor of really big stuff - like 40' tall - she wouldn't have reconstruction as she was told they'd take muscle from her back to do it. She couldn't afford to lose any strength. Been about 6 years now, I think, maybe 7, and she's fine.

Vanessa

Anyway, The first month or so of each season, the lotus covers the surface with floating pads. They start off small, but as it gets warmer, the pads get bigger and bigger. Once they cover the surface, and it seems to me when the pads get crowded and start overlapping, the aerial leaves start to emerge. Once there are enough aerial leaves to shade the surface, the floating pads on the surface rot away, and are replaced by a few smaller, feeble versions of floating pads. I think the reason for this is because there is so much shade.
As you can see from the first photo, the aerial leaves fan out a bit, almost bouquet style, creating a tree-like canopy, trying to get as much sun as possible.
Also, I only keep 3-6" of water above the soil line.

My lotus and potted container ponds get dragged into my garage (attached, never freezes but hovers around freezing on the coldest nights) for the winter and stacked with wooden slats on top of each other. Looks terrible, and I keep them barely submerged, but it works for me. Right now the lotus tubs do not even have any standing water....just mud. Looks NASTY. Here are some pix from a few years ago of my garage swamp.

Not very pretty, huh? LOL!

Thanks also for the pictures and description of how they look during winter and also early floater pads. Mine all have floater pads currently. I am starting to get some aerial pads. I have noticed that some of the floating pads look burned and crispy. Do you ever notice that?

I also seem to have one struggling to make floater pads. I am not sure what is wrong with this lotus. I believe it is my Momo Botan. It was a very small cutting that I got last year. It never got big or spread out like I was hoping. I hope it makes it. These are all in pots using your method of planting. I have 5 different lotus plants this year. Baby Doll, Red Scarf, Tulip (new tuber cutting), Sunflower (also new), and the sickly-looking Momo Botan.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your help.

Congrats on the new house. It will be interesting to see what you do pond and bog-wise.

Also, thanks for the info on the lotus. I am very tempted to try one this summer. The garage here gets close to freezing.. may actually freeze when we have a super-cold winter, but I don't think it froze the past 2 winters.

Anne

Yes, this must go on the already too long to do list.

Thanks for all the photos and instructions.

Yep, feeling great, getting better and better every day.
Getting ready for the big move...been busy!

Best place to find containers is Lowes or Home Depot...they sell half wine barrels and the black plastic liners made specifically to fit inside them. You can always just buy the barrel liner and bury that in the ground like a preform pond. Rocks around the edges, or whatever plants you like to compliment the lotus. :)

Good lotus growing to you!

Brenda

Drew

We are getting ready to move in a week, been packing for weeks, and especially the last 2 days, so not online much, may be down for a few days during the actual move, on June 2.

Where is Rodney by the way?
I sent him an email about a month ago...worried!

Pondly...Joyce

My questions is, how long can it take to sprout? It's been planted at least five weeks now. Nothing yet. I hate to disturb it to check for roots. Maybe I should tho???

By now, you should have seen some kind of growth. :(
Who did you order the lotus from?

Whatever you do...do not dump that pot yet.
I have seen lotus take a while to sprout.
Sooo...wait it out for now.

Next spring (early!), contact me and I will send you some lotus roots.

Pondly...Joyce

Now I am really nervous tho. I was looking really close yesterday in the sunlight for any signs of growth - none. BUT I did see a very small off-white worm moving around above where the tuber is under the gravel. Do you know anything about these worms? I haven't looked it up yet.

I was about to push aside some gravel and nudge the tuber to check for roots when I saw the worm. Hope it's not a lotus tuber worm or something like that. Hope it is an algae worm!