I posted this a few months back but maybe it will be more helpful here
ok so i have a small army of tubers that i am working on successfully growing out the plantlets off the tubers and just thought i would share my process...
I have a mud bottom filled container that i usually use to grow lotus in, in it i lay my tubers
sideways and it is shallow and has about 2 inches of water above the tubers... with a grow light over the top.
As you can see in the photo below i have several tubers growing out at this point.. and the following pictures will show you what happend when i potted up the lily with the largest pads in the container(at the bottom of the tub closest to me).. you want to let them grow out a bit to get their hairy feeder roots so they have no problem continuing to grow in their new home (thanks marie)
I gathered all of the tubers leaves together so i didnt rip any of them when they were tangled with the other plants and i stuck my fingers around the crown/tuber and wriggled to loosen up the soil and conserve the roots that were radiating from the tuber around it... you want to keep as many roots as possible, it was fine that the water got all cloudy because it clears and settles after a day anyway. after i wriggled the plant and tuber from the soil with roots and leaves intact this is what came out... and you can see the plant grew straight up and down while the tuber was planted on its side...
you can see the hair feeder roots, the tuber, the plant all in good shape and ready for its new home, i break the tuber off and set it back into the mud container so that it will grow another plant for me to pot up. upon closer inspection of this plant i realized that 3 tubers were there.. two extra ones had formed! there is the big one i origionally had... and smaller one formed at the crown of the big one.. and then an even smaller one that was nestled into the plants crown itself...
Here is photo of the extra tubers being broken off
and all three together in my hand...
the one in the bottom of the photo even has a tiny leaf growing from the tuber at the point in which i broke and seperated the two... let me see if i can find a zoom in picture of it...
ok got one, kinda fuzzy but this is the zoomed in pic of the bottom most tuber and you can see the tiny little leaf growing on it!
after all is said and done i pot up the plant leaving the tiny tuber that is in the root of the plant immediately under the crown, and let it cruise its way through the season while the other two go back in the mud pond in warm waters sideways for more plants to grow out. what'd ya think? is it worth being a sticky hehe
