Growing tropical water lilies–illustration

Recently I was looking through the statistics provided by Google webmaster tools and noticed an incoming link from an Excite blog located in Japan. In spending some time looking at the blog I stumbled upon a photo of a growing guide for N. ‘Queen of Siam’. It was the plastic type that on one side is a photo of the plant and on the other sides requirements for growing plants. At many plant nurseries you see these included with many plants.

It came to me! An illustration would be very helpful for showing people how to grow tropical water lilies!

Explanation of illustration

Rather than overwhelm the drawing, I choose to keep it simple so its easy to understand.

• Tropical water lilies need full sun to thrive. This means at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day.
• They also need water temperatures of at least 70°F to do well.
• The blue outline is a pool of water / pond / water garden. We recommend growing in a total water depth of between 12″ to 24″. From the crown of the tropical water lily to the water surface we prefer between 6″ to 24″.
• For every gallon of substrate we recommend 5 grams of fertilizer
• Tropical water lilies typically have a spread of a 3 to 6 foot.

What is not shown

These requirements are not set in stone. If you have a pond or water garden that is heavily shaded, you can still grow tropical water lilies but they will have minimal blooms or not bloom at all.

We recommend a water temperature of at least 70°F because otherwise a plant may go dormant. However, an established plant can continue blooming through cooler temperatures. For us, in winter of 2007, we had several tropical water lilies bloom through even when the water temperatures fell to as low at 60°F (possibly even lower but we only noted daytime water temperatures).

This same principle applies to water depth. With a newly planted tropical water lily, you should keep the plant at the upper section of the pond. Once it has established itself you can lower it. We have grown tropical water lilies in a water depth of 25″–however we focus on a water depth of about 18″ as mentioned on our Learn page.

When fertilizing, be sure to keep the fertilizer away from the crown and roots. Simply think “indirect placement.” If it is too close, it can burn the plant which you don’t want to happen. We recommend 5 grams for each gallon but keep in mind that you will need to fertilizer every few weeks to keep the blooms coming along. An economic choice is Osmocote as you can poke a hole deep into the soil and you can apply the pellet fertilizer and then seal the hole with substrate. The chances of the fertilizer burning a plant is minimal.

Finally, the spread of a tropical water lily correlates with the size of the pot–a larger pot equals a larger spread and vice versa.

Photo credit: C.Y.

Original illustration credit: Tojaku.co.jp

Filed under: Cultivation, Tropical water lilies