Lotus to Lily

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 21:52:30 +0530

The Lotus story so far

My very first experience with water flowering plants was pretty good. I learnt a good deal of things; from setting up the pond, germinating the lotus seeds, setting up the right soil, witnessing the growth of the lotus plant, fish eco-system to take care of the pond. Overall, a lot of things learnt.

But I couldn’t succeed in getting the Lotus flower. A lot many reasons. The granite container developed some leakage, which I had to fix by emptying it, which might have caused some shock to the lotus. But more than that, in my understanding, the reason for not being able to flower the lotus, was the amount of sunlight. From what I have learned, these plants need a minimum of 6-8 hrs of sunlight to really give you with the flowering result, whereas the setup of my pond was on the ground with hardly 3-4 hrs of sun. And that too, with all the plants growing, resulted in indirect sunlight.

Lotus to Lily

For my new setup, I chose a large oval container. And this one, I placed on my terrace, carefully choosing a spot where it’d get 6-8 hrs of very bright sun on usual days. Other than that, the rest of the setup is pretty similar to my previous setup in the garden. Guppies, Solar Water Fountain etc.

Initial lily pond setup

The good thing about the terrace is that the setup gets ample amount of sun. You can see that in the picture above, with the amount of algae that has been formed. Something that is vital for the plant’s ecosystem.

I must thank my wonderful neighbor who kindly shared a sapling from their lily plant. They already had had success with flowering the lily. So I had high hopes to see the day come when I’d be happy to write down my experience in this blog post. Though, a lot of patience is needed. I got the lily some time in January this year. And it blossomed now, in October.

So, here’s me sharing my happiness here, in particular order of how I documented the process.

Monday morning greeted with a blossomed lily

Lily Blossom Closeup

Beautiful water reflection

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Dawn to Dusk

The other thing that I learned in this whole lily episode is that the flower goes back to sleeping at dusk. And back to flowering again at dawn. There’s so much to learn in the surrounding, only if you spare some time to the little things with mother nature.

Lily status at dusk

Lily the next day

Not sure how long this phenomenon is to last, but overall witnessing this whole process has been mesmerizing.

This past week has been great. 🙏🏼

Lily on RESEARCHUT

Lotus to Lily

The Lotus story so far

Lotus to Lily

Initial lily pond setup

Monday morning greeted with a blossomed lily

Lily Blossom Closeup

Beautiful water reflection

Dawn to Dusk

Lily status at dusk

Lily the next day