Victoria care instructions

When your victoria arrives, unwrap it gently. It may be easier to float off the newspaper on the leaves in a bucket of warm water. Pot it into a large flowerpot with holes in the bottom. For decent size leaves, use at least a 4 gallon pot, about 18” diameter. The plants will not be too thorny to handle at this point in growth.

I use good old clay soil from my yard for my victorias here at home. Use soil that has not been sprayed with weed killers! Line your pot with a single sheet of newspaper, it keeps the soil from going out of the drainage holes, but allows water circulation. Add dry soil to the pot until it's full. Wet down the soil until saturated with a bucket of warm water, then carefully plant the lily so that its crown is just above or even with the surface of the soil. Not below! Add gravel, regular driveway gravel, lava rock, pea gravel, clean sand or aquarium gravel on top of the soil around the plant to keep the soil from washing away--but do not cover or crowd the crown of the plant, keep the gravel clear of the crown of the plant by about 1" on all sides.

I have been using the generic version of highland rim aquatic plant fertilizer tabs. They are 10-26-10 formulation. They are a 30 day formulation, but I fertilize mine as follows:

When potted in the large pot, 3 tablets, pressed down into the soil in three different locations, near the roots--but not touching the roots directly. They will quickly grow and find the fertilizer.

In two weeks, 2 tablets more.

In two weeks, 3 tablets more.

Place your victoria into its place in your pond, water temperature at least 70 degrees. They can take water depths up to three and a half to four feet with no problems as adults. Your plant will be too short for such a deep placement right at first. Please put it in a shallower place for about a week to root into the pot right at first, and then start slowly nudging it to a deeper place in a week or so. About a foot deeper a week will work really well. The stems will quickly stretch and it will have floating leaves again within 24 hours. If for some reason, they are not floating after 24 hours, go ahead and set it up on some blocks or similar to bring it to the proper depth. (This would be really unusual if it hasn't stretched to the right length and probably not a good sign!)

After about six weeks of growth in their new location, I increase their fertilizer to 4 tablets every two weeks. Continue increasing their fertilizer until they are getting around 12-14 tablets a month, in biweekly doses. Victorias are very heavy feeders!

You will have spectacular leaves and blooms with these instructions. My victoria longwood hybrid planted in a 5 gallon pot, fertilized with these instructions got leaves up to around 54” last year. When the plants develop leaves that are around 14” across, they will develop the characteristic upturned edges on the leaves. They will not have the upturned edges until they do have leaves that big. It is normal for the Longwood hybrid Victorias to have a bronzy/reddish color on the new leaves. This is not a deficiency or problem. Then as the leaves open more, they turn greener. I think mine bloomed about 8-9 times in our short season here last year. You’ll probably get even more blooms if you have a longer warm season where you live.

Another thing that I didn’t realize at first, and it alarmed me was, as the plants grow more leaves, the oldest ones die off and will look messy unless you remove them. My plants seemed to carry up to 6-7 leaves, then the oldest one would start to deteriorate. They can easily be trimmed off with a pair of pruners. Do this before the leaves completely turn to mush, because they will turn into mush, and then you will have thorny mush floating in your pond. But if you get that, you can use a skimmer, like you use with a swimming pool and skim that out. No worries! Don't leave the thorny mush lying on the ground near your pool if you walk around barefooted. The thorns don't seem to break down quickly.

Also, remove any foreign objects on the leaves of your victoria, if you leave foreign matter on the leaves, it seems to burn a hole through the leaves and cause them to become ugly prematurely. If you get any aphids or other bugs chowing down on your victoria leaves, rinse them off with a spray of water, Victorias don't like pesticides or foreign chemicals used on the leaves either. They do seem to be relatively unplagued by insects most of the time though.

A picture of our pond to inspire you in your quest to grow a victoria:

For even more care instructions, and expert advice, do a google or yahoo search for victoria adventure or water gardeners international websites.

If this guide was useful or informational to you, please take a moment and rate my guide. Thank you,