How to Properly Choose and Care for Easter Lilies
Every spring, right before the spring holiday, my church decorates with Easter Lilies. The Lilies are purchased by members of the congregation in memory of loved ones. Then, after Easter has been celebrated, the purchasers of the Lilies are allowed to take them home. That’s how I end up with a Lily or two every year.
The Lilies are beautiful, as they are in full bloom. And their scent fills up a room with a sweet, perfume-like smell.
The nursery the Easter Lilies come from knows how to properly choose and care for Easter Lilies. They sell only the biggest, healthiest looking potted Lilies. If you want to properly choose a Lily from a local grower, then I have some helpful tips for you so you’ll end up with the best you can find:
1. Check along the stem of the plant. It should be filled with dark green leaves from the bottom to the top. Don’t choose Lilies that have brown or yellowing leaves on its stem.
2. Properly choose an Easter Lily that will be easy to care for. The best plant will have many blooms on it. Some of the blooms should be fully open, while there should be others that haven’t opened yet. This way, you can enjoy the beauty of your Lily for a longer period of time. When the current Lily blooms dry up and die, there will be new ones to take their places.
3. Avoid choosing Lily plants that are wilted or droopy. These have not been taken care of properly.
Now that you have chosen a gorgeous Easter Lily for yourself, take it home and set it on a table top or on another sturdy surface. If you have house cats, take care! You’ll need to place your new Easter Lily out of their reach! If your cats are nosy little creatures like mine are, they sniff and inspect every item that comes into the house. Sometimes, they chomp on the item, especially if it’s a green plant. Therefore, I place toxic potted plants like the Easter Lily in a room that’s separated by a door from my feline friends.
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Most types of Easter Lilies are toxic to house cats. If they eat just one leaf, the toxins in the Lily plant will poison your cat and ultimately cause kidney failure. If this happens, you’ll need to rush your cat to your veterinarian for care and treatment.
With that life-saving warning given, let’s find out how to properly care for your Easter Lily plant. If you properly care for your Lily, it should enhance the decor and sweeten the air in your home for several weeks:
1. To properly care for it, your potted Lily needs some indirect sunlight so it can thrive.
2. In my part of the country, our springtimes are cool and damp. So our furnaces and other heat sources are still in operation. Keep your Easter Lily away from direct heat sources, heat registers, portable heaters, et cetera.
3. To properly care for your plant, the ideal environment should be a cool 60 to 62 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Water your new Easter Lily every couple days or so, depending on its needs. Check the soil for dryness to determine how much water it needs.
5. Cut the pollen sacs off your Easter Lily so they don’t make a mess. And pinch off faded flowers as they occur.
After your Lily plant has finished blooming, if the weather is right, it’s time to move it outside to its new surroundings. The weather should be fairly warm with all danger of frost past.
To properly care for Lillies, choose a sunny location where your Lily plant can grow and thrive. Then, carefully remove it from its pot. Loosen up the roots of your Easter Lily by gently shaking them. Plant your Lily in a hole that’s wide enough to accommodate its roots plus leave it room to grow. The hole for the plant should be about 3 to 5 inches deeper than the pot is tall.
And, to properly care for your new Easter Lily, give it water and fertilizer on a regular basis. You should see new flowers on your Lily before the end of the summer.
