HelpfulGardener.com

Hi all,

I'm sad.....
My friend brought me from India one small water lettuce. I put it in a bowl of water with some soil in the bottom.

Now I see the leaves are starting to shrink and dying.. And some are becoming soft (like rotting)...

Can anyone advice me it this? Can I still save it? How should I take care of it indoors? Help? .... : (

Thanks a lot in advance!

I don't know. I had trouble keeping water hyacinth alive in the indoor aquarium. They died and killed the fish which were new-ish as well.

In retrospect, I think more light was needed. Also, the air-supply stone clogged up so that it wasn't producing the nice wall of bubbles any more.

All in all, it showed me that I needed to do more research before buying more fish. It's on my list of THINGS TO DO and NEW PROJECT!

I toyed with the idea of overwintering some of my pond plants indoors, but when I discovered what it would mean in terms of work -- the water has to be changed every couple of days, so I've been told -- and the cost of the lighting equipment I would have needed, I found that simply buying new plants in the spring was much less expensive. Both water lettuce and water hyacinth are pest species in my area and very invasive in local ponds. If I wanted to look around a bit, I could probably get new plants for free.

If I buy the plants at an aquarium store, it costs about $10 to restock both of my ponds every spring. My ponds are just decorative, only about a foot deep, and freeze solid if we have a cold winter. This year wasn't that cold, though, and it looks like I won't have to bother restocking. In fact, it seems I have a bumper crop of both species, so I'll have to remove some of them with a rake. I figure they'll be a good addition on the compost pile.

I have overwintered pond plants for years. I have aquariums and a 100 gallon pond in my basement. Water Hyscinths and water lettuce are hard to winter over. I tried the aquarium method and here in zone 6 USA they died every Feb. Now in August I plant water hyacinths in dirt in a pot with no holes in the bottom. It must hold water. In Oct I take them inside with my other water garden plants and put them under a shop light. I have learned not to feed then it kills them. If they survive in April I put them outside in a heated tub with a window over it. I leave them in the pot and when they start growing I carefully pull them out of the dirt and they take off. This works for me.

Thanks for all your advises!
Well..mine finally died. Next time, if I have more I will try to apply what I learned here.

: )

Happy Gardening,
MM