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Winter in the Pond

© Carol Wallace

The lotus in my pond is looking very sad this week. The leaves are drooping as badly as the head of a punished child. Not only that, but my waterlilies seem to be disappearing. Where once the pond surface was covered with leaves in a rainbow of color, now there are only a few small new leaves and a lot of old, yellow ones. The rushes and reeds have all turned brown. And I am not in the least bit panicked. This is the hardy pond plant's usual response to frost and cooling temperatures. They are going dormant. It's a signal to the pond-owner. Time to winterize the pond.

Now if I had only tropical waterlilies in my pond, I might not have these clues. Mine are busily sending out new leaves and blooming madly. Accustomed as they are, deep in their genes, to living in areas that are pleasant all year, they truly don't have enough sense to come in from the cold. They'll just keep going until I rescue them, or an unexpected deep frost does them in. I will be rescuing mine this week, removing them from the pond and storing their tubs, still wet, in black plastic bags where they will remain until January. Then I will remove the tubers that I hope have formed in those pots and will float them in a bit of water locked in a zip-lock bag, floating in a big tub of water. Soon those tubers will sprout leaves again. I keep the water in those tubs at 75 degrees F. using an aquarium heater.

Once the tuber has sprouted, pot tuber and leaves in a small pot with dirt and submerge it in a big tub of water. Unpot the tuber when the leaves have grown to at least 1" and remove the leaves from the tuber. Repot the leaves, and refloat the tuber in a baggie until it sprouts again. If it does resprout, follow the above procedure once more. Check the potted-up leaf sprouts periodically, and if you see the roots leaving the bottom of the pot, transplant into a larger one. As long as the pot is small enough to stay under water in whatever container you are using as an indoor "pond," you can keep potting up until spring, but it's better to start small and move up to larger pots if and when you need to.

In spring, when the water temp has reached about 75 degrees F., transplant into a regular waterlily container and sit back and wait for blooms! I made 5 plants like this last winter, which are blooming as I type. Since tropical waterlilies can cost from $18-$35 a pop, I consider this economical, but more importantly, it provided me with a pleasant garden chore in the dead of winter. This is just one of the several methods for overwintering your tropicals, but one pioneered by Joe Tomocik at the Denver Botanical gardens. For more thorough instructions, I recommend Tomocik's book, Water Gardening, part of the American Garden Guides series, available through Amazon Books.

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