FEEDING WATER LILIES

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

 

11/X/2024

 

Water lilies have given us so much joy over the last year. Some were new additions and some had adorned the Ellis’ Garden for over a year. A couple of them bloomed only once. Two of them decided not to bloom at all. Reasons, we don’t know and had to be investigated. One could watch them all day. They also became a photographer's delight.

 

With the rainy season transcending to autumn, flowering slowed down a bit. Still, there is a hope that they will continue to bloom. The slowing of flowering was a hint that it was time to give a thorough check and detailed inspection.

 

For that their pots needed to be fished out from the tubs they are immersed in. The ‘root cause’ was immediately visible. They were the roots themselves. With passage of time, the maze of roots ‘engulfed’ the whole pot. There was hardly any mud left for them to feed on. Their energy supplies had been cut out.

 

Besides, algae had made its extensive network within the tub. A thick dense mesh of the ‘green’ had eaten up the remaining nutrients. Algae cannot be eliminated completely, even with chemicals. Getting one's hands dirty is the best way to clear the menace.

 

Algae removal is a continuous and regular process. With best of efforts, not more than sixty percent can be removed at any given time. If the algae is left to grow wild, it reduces manoeuvre space for fish. Fish fries get entrapped in that lattice and die sometimes.

 

Be that as it may. If the plant is disturbed during the flowering stage by way of trimming of tubers/roots, chances are that it may go into a shock and stop flowering completely. The aim was not to hurt them but to continue blooming. For that, adding manure was the best solution. One had to create space within the pot and the labyrinth of roots to feed them.

 

People fond of flowering plants know if there is something wrong with the plant at a glance. If the size of flowers starts to decrease, the obvious reason is that it is running out of nutrition. This was a definite indication for me to carry out an in detailed check of the water lily pots and their set up.

 

The state of the pot was like you are wearing pants of size 34” when your tummy is 38”. That bulge at the waist is what had happened to the plants. Roots had started to overhang from the pots.

 

There were two choices. To clip and snip the overhangs, without disturbing the plant much and to shove in some manure into the dense maze of existing roots. Or, to tackle the overgrowth once plants start going into dormancy on the onset of winters. I chose the first option.

 

Manure at hand was cow dung compost and mustard seed cake powder. Both are rich in the basic nutrients which the plants love, called NPK. Natural manure is slow to act but is an effective method of feeding the plants.

 

Compost was sieved and so was the oil cake, which was ground in the blender to a very fine powder. Both of them were packed in a newspaper ‘Puria’. Ideal is to fill small cloth ‘potlis’ with manure and insert them.

 

Then I remembered that one of the sellers had sent ‘nutrient rich tablets’ to be fed from time to time which had gone missing. It took me some effort to locate them. If the nursery people use them to get better blooms, why waste them. One could use them once and see the results. I presume they are NPK fertilizer in tablet form.

 

There was one more concern while shoving those packets into the pots. The mustard cake powder/fertilizer tablets should not spill into the water. If fish consume it, they could die. Cow dung manure being natural doesn’t harm the fish.

 

It necessitated pulling each pot out from its tub. A trowel was made use of to dig deep and create a fissure in the between roots to make space for these packets to be thrust in. Once the packs were in, leftover mud was used to cover and seal that space to prevent any spill over and dissolving in the water. Pots were then carefully placed back in their tubs.

 

Postponing the task could have led to smaller/no blooms at all. Let us wait for the results. Another task is now at hand, which is cleaning the tubs meticulously, as too much debris has accumulated at the bottom. It could disbalance the water parameters for the fish.

 

The roots will start absorbing nutrients slowly and give results in a fortnight. Will my effort bear fruit? I wonder!!!!!!

    

 JAI HIND 

©® NOEL ELLIS