How to Divide and Re-Pot Water Lilies

Gord: You got some magnificent water lilies there but you know what, I bet you there is a bit of worth that are involved at the end of the year or maybe at the beginning of the year to try to take care of them. Can you sort of show us some of your secrets? Gerald: Absolutely, if you want a beautiful large water lilies like the one in the pond beside us Sir Gord, it is very important to do several things including fertilizing, there is a fertilizer tablet that you should use at least twice the summer. Simply poke a hole in the soil, poke the tablet in and cover it over. You can actually do that under water. Gord: Because I have heard that, I guess it is very important that you actually cover it over and poke it down because imagine too much fertilizer will actually promote allergy blooms. Gerald: Yes, that is right Gord. The other really important thing to do when you have a lily that is starting to get root bound like this one and grow out of the pot, it is very important to divide them and I will show you how to divide them and repot them here now. Gord: Okay, perfect. Gerald: Basically, you just pull it out of the pot, you can see there is one being crowned here growing and a secondary growth here, so we could divide this very easily into two lilies by simply removing some of the soil around it— Gord: Of this things. Gerald: It can get very brittle, you can remove all the roots and that is not a problem. And then about four inches back from the main crown, do a sharp slice, you can see there the size of the tuber, the main crown is the one that is really most important to keep so you can remove a lot of the soil from that crown and a lot of the old roots because it will grow new roots, that is no problem. Gord: And you probably got a lot of people just cringing now, look what you have done to that thing. Gerald: Probably, it is a little brittle. Gord: It does. Gerald. Then you start with a very large pot Gord, three gallons are better for a large variety like this, newspaper on the bottom, some gravel to promote flow through the pot then fill it with a heavy top soil that balls up when you squeeze it. Gord: Okay, so uncommon to what you want in the garden base. Gerald. Yes, no pit, no manure, no sand, just plane old garden soil, it is really what you want. Take the tuber, create a little bit of a whole at the edge of the pot, place the cut edge against the edge of the pot in the hole then top the soil of with gravel, pea gravel is best because it keeps the soil from roiling up. And if you got fish in the pond, it also keeps them from digging in the pot. Gord: Okay, now are there certain varieties, we got the big leaf varieties, the ones that have well can be in very deep water and you got the dwarf varieties, do they need to be potted more often than each other? Gerald: No, it is all the same procedure, the larger the lilies the larger the pot and this one here is just about complete Gord, really all that you want to do is rinse it now and then put it back into the pond. Gord: And you are set Gerald, you made it look very easy, thank you very much for having us so. Gerald: Thanks Gord.