Water lily floating to the surface

madjackslam

I've got a 10ft x 6ft pond, roughly 3 feet deep in the middle. Water lily (sorry, can't find variety at the moment) in the centre has done brilliantly this year. Been flowering for maybe three or four months, and leaves cover a third of the pond. Recently I've noticed it had leaves with short-looking stems near the surface. Was repotting some marginals and thought I would pull off some of the mankier water lily leaves I could reach, and sure enough the whole plant came floating towards me. The whole plant has lifted up from its pot at the bottom and floated to the surface. What would you do? I don't have any waders, so am keen not to get into the freezing water unless I have to. I'd wondered about cutting off some of the foliage and either hoping it floats to the bottom, or attach a stone to it for encouragement, so it's safe for the winter, then possibly dividing it up in the spring.

WeAreGhosts

We have a similar sized pond and also have a water lily. I'd try and get the pot if I were you. I've had one in the pond without a pot but it ended up a bit of a weedy specimen, not sure how it would be over winter. Could you reach the pot with a garden rake (or similar) and drag it towards you? 

Carrot007

Re-pot it and put it back. cut if back a bit and put some rocks down for it to stand on if you don't want it too deep.

That's what I did to the one in this house in the pond that was there when I got here. And that was a 6 foot long by 2 foot by 2 foot root monstrosity or root  I had to put waders on and get in the pond with a saw to cut up. I kept 4 or 5 bits in small pots. And that's why you need pots!

Never had them come out of the pot when pulling the manky bits off though. No idea why that would occur. Roots should have formed around the stones in the bottom and grown into the hessian you lined the pot with. (And by pot I assume you mean many holed basket).

twopenny

You could probably get the pot and plant out using a painters extension pole (cheap/diy store) and wind some sort of hook around it.

But to get it back in the middle might be more difficult.

Once repotted and weight attached  you could gently throw (seen this done by practised people)  but might cause some damage or not end up in the right place.

So I'd find yourself a fisherman and borrow their waders - unless you can persuade them to go in for you.

Or you could do something creative with the extension pole. Make a handle from wire or safer string for the basket, use the extension pole with your nicely fashioned hook to lift  it by the handle and gently ease it to the right spot and unhook it.

Might sound ecentric but I used an extending painters pole and thick wire hook to dig out an offending plant growing in my neighbours gutter quite sucessfully.

If you work from the 6ft side it's only 3ft away to the centre

madjackslam

Thanks everyone. Managed to borrow one of those Wolf-Garten poles and hooked it out. The floating mass included the lily, its root system, the holed basket, mud that the roots had grown out into, and quite a bit of rooted hornwort. I separated off the hornwort and chucked that in separately. Cut off any old, yellowing leaves, and then slid it back in. It went to the bottom fairly successfully. But I think in spring I will, as twopenny says, find myself a fisherman (!!) and maybe divide and repot it more thoroughly.