Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants lilies in containers

I have some habitat structures I've built which run down the slope of my pond bank from 18" to 8 feet deep. On top of the structure in 3 feet of water I've mounted a 55 gallon plastic drum cut in half the long way and filled with dirt. My hope is that whatever I plant in the drum won't migrate out because there is no soil outside of the drum for another 5 feet to the pond bottom. What lillies would be good and hearty in zone 5 for these containers?

I am a new owner of an established 2 1/2 acre pond with the same question you asked about lillies in containers. Unfortuantley no replies are posted. Have you reached a conclusion as to the probability the lillies will spread outside the containers' confines. My wife really wants some lilly specimens, but I am afraid they will get out of control.

We have hardy water lilies in our pond in northern Ohio. When we purchased them, they came in large plastic pots that control their growth. As they get larger, you can move them to larger pots and they can be separated to start new plants.

We cut all of the stems back in the fall and move them to water about 4 feet deep for the winter.

Before I go into another long discussion of water lilies and repeat a lot of the same stuff, do a search (upper right pg corner) for past discussions and read what has been said so far about water lilies for ponds. use the search words - water lily

I think you will be able to find answers to your questions noted above. Andrew Davis and I have discussed quite a bit about water lilies in ponds.

I started out working with water lilies planted in tubs for larger ponds. Since then, I have abandoned the container concept, if you expect very much competition by water lilies against filamentous algae.

Search in the headings (Search Forum) of: Questions & Observations; Controling Unwanted Plants; Balance of Plants in the Environment; and Help. If you still have questions after reading pertinent stuff in these old posts then come back and ask an unanswered question and someone with experience should be able to give you some more info.

Hi Bill,

How are your water lilies doing?

I would have thought among the hardy hybrid varieties there would be some quite sedate hardy varieties worth a go.

Sedate, as in spreading no faster than a foot a year... Some of the Marliac varieties are quite well behaved, slow spreading habits...

Regards, andy

Are any of you growing lillies in ponds with grass carp? How did you protect the lily from the carp?

Thanks

Frank

Frank in larger body of water the grass carp do little if any damage to lillies. However I stuck 100 little 3-5 inchers in my ornamental pond b/c a client backed out of purchase and had nowhere to put them. They nearly ate them to nothing b/f I noticed it in about 2 weeks. BUt like I said we have clients with lillies and grass carp and they do little damage. All situations are diff.

Four or five grass carp (amur) are pretty hard on lilies in a pond less than 1 acre. In ponds where lilies are well established in big (20-40 ft) patches, damage from a few grass carp is not really noticable. But, Hybrid Lilies are very hard to get established in a pond less than 1 acre with grass carp already present. G.carp tend to eat the new sprouts and pull out freshly planted lilies and make "short work" of small thin, lily patches. G.carp like to eat new lily leaf growth in the spring when not much else besides filamentous algae is growing.

If a pond has other more palatable plants present for g.carp to eat, then lily establishment may not be as great of a problem. Many ponds with g.carp have most of the good tasting plants already eliminated by the amur. Some have given up trying to grow lilies in a 1/3 ad pond with two large grass carp present. They are now trying to get the g.carp out; not such an easy task as they initially thought.

For getting lilies established with Amur present
one would initially think of fencing off the lilies. I have tried putting tree branches around the new lily growth with some success.
Once grass carp discover the lily flowers, I found that amur will quickly eat the fresh lily flowers so if you have grass carp and water lilies expect to see fewer flowers and the flowers will not last as long compared to when amur are absent.

Andy - Hybrid Lilies are doing pretty good. Doing well are Fire Opal, Lily Pons, Peter Slocum, Carolina Sunset, Peaches and Cream, Gold Metal, Joey Tomochick, Perry's Double White. Growing but, I still don't have good growth for some of the less aggressive lilies such as Atropurpurea, Wildfire, Vivid Rose, Mayla, Almost Black and Chrometella. Just getting established Venus and Indiana, Did not have much luck with James Brydon, Are-En-Ciel, Pink Heaven, Perry's Baby Red, Hollandia.

Sorry for hijacking this thread but I would like to wish Bill a happy birthday. A big thanks for all your help in the past and for your continued dedication in sharing your wealth of knowledge with everyone here. Here's to you Bill.
John Wood.

Perhaps I should have been more specific in my previous post. I assume water lillies will spread via natural seed spread. Are there any hybrid varieties that will not produce fertile seeds?

Bill, Hope it was a good one.

I have had good luck with "James Bryddon" and "Pink Sensation" in my pond. I actually planted both varieties in the pond bottom and not had them naturalize to other areas of the pond. Pink Sensation is heavily scented and smells terrific. My advice is to call Slocum Water Gardens or Lilypons and ask one of their experts about the suitability for zone 5.
I have tried a lot of different waterlilies, including many tropical varieties. If you decide to grow a tropical water lily variety you need to surround the tub with some chicken wire or other protection or muskrats will clean them out. You can remove the protection once the plant gets larger. Apparently tropicals taste really great. I live at my pond so landscaping the part near my house is very appealing. I have had one variety of hardy hybrid get out of control and I had to kill it all. I am pretty sure this was "Caroline Strawn" a pretty pink lily but very aggressive.

Member # 509, Andrew Davis, sells waterlilies, bog plants etc. His email address is in his profile, and he would probably respond to any inquiry as kindly and as quickly as he responded to mine yesterday.

I don't think any of the hybrid lilies produce fertile seeds. At least none I've worked with so far have produced fertile seeds. I think many of the lilies when root bound in containers could creep out of a container. Lilies are more likely to grow profusely when the pond bottom is very mucky and soft. Lilies spread slowly in fresh dug hard packed pond bottoms. Larger forms of whites and yellows tend to grow deeper and spread quicker. Many catalogs selling lilies indicate how large of the general spread of each type will be. Ones with larger spread tend to grow deeper and are faster spreading.

Wild white lilies are notorious for fertile seeds, abundant fragmentation of root buds, fast spreading and deep growing; cheap but troublesome.

Among the hardy waterlilies 'species' lilies such as Odorata will seed, the hybrids (cross bred) mostly have very low fertility, you might see one or none fertile seed pod among a thousand crowns.

There are five or six 'rhisome' growing types among the hardies, Odorata hybrids amble across a pond quite fast, perhaps up to six foot a year, while Marliac type rhisomes are mainly slow growers, it might take a Froebeli ten years to spread one foot in distance, though, you will find a lot of crowns that flower in that small space are combined with a very high flower to leaf ratio

Whoa, Bill has an Atropurpurea, gosh! that is a bit special... Where grazing seems to put too much pressure on waterlilies, a fence of chicken mesh encircling the positions should buy time for the crowns to strengthen up. With a good volume of 'bio mass' outnumbering the fish, grazing levels can strike a happy medium

I don't know how grass carp compare with koi carp, habit wise, however with low fish density to high plant density, waterlilies cope quite well with koi, where there is one adult koi per 4,000 gallons on a heavily planted pond

Regards, andy
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