How many pads can you remove?

[greenthumbnails]

According to Sean's tutorial for tropical plants in Dixie cups you can leave something like 3 or so pads and its sufficient for the tropical lily to still grow and bloom, allowing you to fit many tropicals in a small pond or space.

How many pads can you leave on a hardy to produce the same effect?  I don't have a lot of space as my ponds are container ponds or 100 gal stock tanks, so I find it hard to keep hardies as they take up a lot of pot space on the bottom of the small container ponds/ stock tanks due to  they grow horizontally in the pot (needs bigger pot than a dixie cup).  This one hardy in particular that I have has an enormous spread and huge pads to rival a tropical lily, and I would like to remove a lot of pads on it down to 3 if it won't kill it or prevent it from blooming.  Does anyone know if I can do this?

[SueSTx]

I have pinched them down to 5 or 7 when I was dividing them in the summer.  I never lost one doing it.  They did continue to bloom.

[LeeAnne151]

You can also trade your monster for a miniature

[greenthumbnails]

You can also trade your monster for a miniature

Was thinking of doing that next year.  I divided it for the first time this year after much hesitation.  Didn't like the idea/feel of cutting into a perfectly healthy plant tuber....felt like I was doing something wrong.  When I flipped the tuber over I noticed that my slice went right through a growing point on the other side, so I was actually afraid that I might have killed one of the divisions.  Wanted to wait to see that I still had one half alive before I offered up the other one for trade.  I really like the bloom (and its my first hardy that I bought, and stayed alive for me when I started ponding last year) so I don't want to trade the whole plant.

[Joyce]

I just sheared ALL my pads and buds, blooms off 2 Helvola's because when I tried to repot them, they were so entangled, just couldn't do it.
Now, a week later...they looks better than ever and blooming too! 

[Timgod]

The biggest fear we have for waterlilies is usually killing it.
Lilies are however a lot tougher than most of us give them credit for.
I've had lilies totally defoliated by gypsy moths, assorted animals etc and as long as they had a healthy rhizome or tuber and a decent root system they always came back unless it was really adverse weather...ie. extremely cold or hot.
As Joyce described, you can basically take almost everything off of a hardy and there is enough energy in the rhizome to put up more pads as long as you do not damage the crown.

If you are timid, hack off 1/4 or 1/3 and see the results. Then you can guage how much more you want to prune with a new found confidence.

Experience was the best teacher for me. People told me the same and until I tried was afraid of killing them.

Tim

[greenthumbnails]

Thanks for the feedback, and the vote of confidence.