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Over Wintering in Massachusetts (zone 5)Over Wintering Tropical plants
Over Wintering our Tropical 'Colorata' water lilies.
Our tropical 'Colorata' lilies spend their winters in a 10 gallon unheated aquarium in the warm furnace room. It is a mistake to put them in the same small aquarium with the fish because the fish (especially koi) spend their entire winter digging up and eating your tropical water lilies. The 'Coloratas' usually continue flowering for a while and then die down. We turn off the lights and wait until May. Dividing and replanting our tropical water liliesIn the middle of May, we start the new 'Coloratas' by putting garden soil and slow release fertilizer in a group tiny pots. Next we dig up and carefully wash the soil off the tubers. They have many little tubers, each the size of a peanut with a microscopic growing tip attached the the mother tuber which drop off when touched. Each of these minute babies is placed in the center of a pot and gently pressed into the soil. Then, all the pots are returned to the aquarium, warm water is carefully added until the (microscopic) growing tips are an inch from the surface. The thermostat on the aquarium heater is turned to about 80 degrees and the grow lights set for 14 hours a day. In a week or two the leaves are about an inch in diameter and almost ready to pot up. They go into our unheated greenhouse tubs when there is no danger of frost and the water in there has warmed up. Tropical water lilies like warm water and do not grow much below 75 degrees. Over Wintering Hardy Water lilies and Marginal PlantsIf the pond is 30 inches or more in the deepest part, the plants will over winter safely below the ice if moved into 'deep water' for the season. The hardy water lily tubers must never be allowed to freeze. Over Wintering Tubs and Shallow PondsThe plants and fish will have to move to winter quarters because the tub or pond might freeze solid. If another deeper pond is available that is the easiest. They don't need much space because they will not be growing. Another alternative is to bring the whole tub inside and place it in an unheated basement. A small pond can be emptied into a different tub in the basement. It will have to be drained, carried, refilled in its new place. It is a good idea to save the water (or most of it) so the fish will not be shocked by the change. We use empty milk containers which we save up for purposes like this. The fish should not be fed for the winter unless the temperature is above 50 degrees. Bring the tub out again around Memorial day and remember to fertilize the water lilies. Another method is to lift out the water lilies, wash them off, cut off the long leaves and roots, dust the cut sections in either charcoal or fungicide powder, label and store the bare tubers several inches apart in damp sphagnum or peat moss in a cool frost-free place. They can be replanted next May. As long as you can see the green growing tip they should be alive. But, the fish will still have to find a large tub or aquarium inside to survive. Over Wintering Pond FishThe fish are the biggest problem during the winter in our climate.
If the pond freezes over the toxic gases cannot escape from the water and the fish often die. They are capable of surviving short periods of thin ice but not months of impenetrable ice. We have two four foot by eight foot by two feet deep tubs in in an insulated but unheated green house. The fish survive in our greenhouse tubs but not in an outside pond unless a small section of pond is kept ice free. There are heaters to do this but we have not used them ourselves. We put our fish in the green house tubs or bring them in to large filtered aquariums. This is tricky because suddenly moving large fish into a small aquarium causes ammonia to build up in the water which is toxic to the fish. Using the original pond water in the aquarium will help because it will contain the beneficial bacteria. Very sparce feeding and frequent partial water changes will assist the tank in achieving a balance in the early days. It is easy to catch the fish in a tub. We just keep bailing until only a small amount of water is left in the bottom, then we catch them with a net. They hide in the mud and are very difficult to see, so we always count to make sure we catch them all. To catch fish in small ponds we have to bail out the water too. It is not an easy task but we cannot bear to leave them to die. An inadvertent benefit to this process is that the pond gets cleaned out of all the fall debris.
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