Seedling Development

I'd read that plain, ordinary garden dirt was fine for lotus, so that's what I used. I filled each of four small plastic buckets with about 3 inches of soil from the vegetable garden, added water to cover the soil to about 3 inches, and let the mess sit overnight for the silt to settle out. I planted the first seed on 8/14/02, 5 1/2 days after putting them in to soak. Lacking any detailed instructions, I simply took the seed in my fingers and plunged it down into the muck, trying to get it deep enough that there would be about an inch of soil over it. Of course, this stirred up the sediment again, but I figured, "Hey, they grow wild in mud and bogs, so what the heck!"

Took this picture after the water had cleared a bit, although you can still see a cloud of silt at the base of the green shoot.

On the right, you can see  that above the water level, the tip of the sprout differentiated into a double roll that was clearly going to develop into a leaf, and sure enough, the two photos below show these rolls opening up.

Three of the five seeds I started out with are doing well (8/23/02). A fourth one is sending up sprouts but these don't seem to be forming leaves, and the fifth one developed two leaves which have subsequently died.

I'll keep these lotuses going (I hope!) in the greenhouse through the winter, and then put them out in tubs on the patio next spring, until the pond I plan to build is ready for them.