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article: Containers of Water Lilies
Containers of Water Lilies
In the water garden, where you place your plants and containers will become
important to their continued life and growing process. In this article, I want
to tell you more about what I know about where to place certain types of plants
in the water garden so your pond area will grow nicely without problems.
Tropical Water Lilies
Water lilies are one of the many plants that you have to choose from for the
water garden. There are both day and night blooming water lilies that you can
decide to use. Most lilies should be planted in containers to control their
growth, and their over taking of your water garden as they can be an aggressive
grower. Tropical water lilies should be planted in containers that are at least
ten inches across for each plant.
Each plant will need about a two to five gallons of soil, the more mature your
plants are the more soil they will require, so you can start with a mid sized
container so you don’t have to work with your lilies for a while if you like.
Every two years, your lilies will need transplanted with new soil while they are
still in the growing stage.
When starting water lilies for the first time, you will be working with tubers.
These are small bulb like roots that you will plant in the soil in the
container. Place the tubers about two inches from the top of the soil level. The
roots will grow down in to the soil to support the plant, and the tuber will not
become rotten as it sits in the water, as it will be just below the soil. The
tip of the tuber should not be buried in the soil, but allowed to peek out of
the soil.
Sand should be added to the top most portion of the container to help keep the
soil from floating away. Small amounts of gravel can be added around the edges
of the container to help with balance and weight but not should be added to the
center of the container, as this is where the lilies will grow up and out of the
soil.
Adding fertilizer tablets to the soil will help the roots want to break out and
seek the nutrients in the soil. You can put the containers in the water, where
the depth is up to twelve inches deep. Water much deeper is going to leave you
with hard to work with container plants, and it will allow the lilies to escape
the confines of the container spreading through your pond. When first placing
the container in the water garden, you should keep the container placement at a
level of two to six inches so the plant has a chance to become established
before becoming submerged.

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