GardenBanter.co.uk - water lilies

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:03:08 EDT, Jim wrote:

I keep forgetting about fertilizing lilies. Ours live in 30" tubs
filled with 2" rock and also on the floor of the cement pond. It
would be an interesting experiment to fertilize the tub groups and see
about flowers. Mostly, we have avoided adding anything but potassium
to the pond, considering the fish to be the nitrogen adders.

How do your fertilizer stakes affect the general pond algae levels?

Most commercial fertilizers are N-P-K, N = Nitrogen, P = Phosphate and the
K is Potash. Phosphate is what makes things bloom (including algae) the
nice thing about Phosphate in a tab or spike, when inserted into soil
phosphate binds to clay.

Considering I have mostly sandy soil it apparently doesn't take much clay
in the soil for it to bind up that phosphate as my ponds are clear to the
bottom.

My biggest problem this year was due to cool weather this spring, I got
string algae because the higher plants were slow to get going. That's
cleared up in the koi pond, but in the lily pond, it is now sitting on the
bottom with anacharis and hornwort growing out of it. A part of me wants to
rake it out... but the other part wants to leave the anacharis and hornwort
alone.

I'm hoping come August heat the lilies will take off and shade the string
algae to nothingness.

So to answer your question, as long as you're inserting tabs or spikes
before the soil, I see no problem. With rock.... I guess it would depend
how clean the rock is.

I know I had to feed the lilies in the holding tubs this week as they were
looking a bit anemic. 1 tub has 2 wakins... and the other did have taddies,
but it looks like they all turned to frogs so I need to add more taddies
from the cooler kiddy pool. ~ jan
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Zone 7a, SE Washington State
Ponds: www.jjspond.us