Winter in New Orleans

New Orleans is having its typical month of simply awful weather. It's raining almost daily. The temperatures are not cold, in the 40's and 50's, but it is gray and drizzly all the time. The Carnival parades are starting and it's difficult to mount a parade in the rain and cold. Mardi Gras, the culmination of the Carnival season is February 20th, so in less than 3 weeks the madness will be over for another year.
And what about our ponds. Most Carnival participants don't give two hoots about their ponds during the season. Frankly, in this weather, all I want to do is look outside from a heated house.
We can, though, make sure we are ready for spring because it really is just around the corner. Make sure your garden tools are sharp, well oiled and ready to go. Check your pond supplies. Do you have left over chemicals or fertilizer from last fall. Chances are they have lost their punch, so pitch them. Check your fish net. Is it holding together or will you lose the first fish you try to catch this spring? What about your pump? Is it clean and ready to go back into the pond? Here where we rarely freeze, we leave our pumps in the pond, but where the weather stays below freezing, you have removed your pump and stored it in water in the garage, right? Check all your hoses and tubing; make sure it has not cracked and is still supple and ready to go. Check your hose clamps. They fail just when you have used the last one you have on hand, so put hose clamps on your hardware store list.
Get ready. Spring really is coming. Look for azaleas soon!

Thinking about spring

I know, I know, it's January and it's cold out there. But the seed catalogs are arriving and all of you under a snow blanket are reading them, marking your favorites and maybe even starting some seeds in your houses. We long for spring and think that winter is the longest season of the year.

Now is the time to start thinking about what spring pond tasks await us. If we cleaned the pond last fall after the leaves fell, we are probably in good shape for warm weather's arrival. If not, we have that nasty task to look forward to.

Now is also a great time plan what more we wish to do with our ponds. Do we want to add to our plant, add to our out of pond landscaping or maybe make more or bigger ponds? Now is the time for planning, thinking, dreaming.

If you have questions about what you want or what you need, please feel free to contact me at any time.

Letters, we get letters

I am in need of a new pond heater for the pond in my newly-acquired home. Are the 100w de-icers efficient enough to keep the fish alive over a New England winter? I have both a 1250w and a 100w jobbie. I'd obviously like to use the one with a lower wattage (and buy myself a second one to save the pennies)... but am I fooling myself? Are they just a piece of junk? Hope you can give me some insight.

Thanks!


Pondlady sez:

Thanks for writing.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer. I live in New Orleans and we don't exactly get frozen ponds. If your pond is below the frost line, you should be OK. Give the smaller one a try. If a hole in the ice stays open, you are fine. If not, try the bigger one. All it needs to do is keep a hole open.

If your pond has frozen solid in the past, then you must think about bringing your fish in for the winter because nothing will work to keep the water thawed unless you think about a swimming pool heater.

Rain and more rain

It has just now stopped raining in New Orleans and we are one soggy city. My shoes get sucked off if I walk through the front yard to the mailbox.

The entire city is hyped about the Saints football team and no one is all that interested in the health of their ponds. Good thing ponds can tend to themselves for ages with no human interference. In fact, they often do better if we just leave them alone. i suspect that will be the case here if the football team wins tomorrow. And then comes Mardi Gras on February 20th. New Orleans is a constant party from now until Ash Wednesday.

Of course, only half of the population has returned to the city 17 months after Katrina and it may stay that way. But ponds either in someone's yard or abandoned are doing well. After my house was destroyed, it was a year before I could move my pond to my new house. There were about 8" of water in the pond, lots of anacharis and several goldfish. This, with no power and no attention for a year. Ponds are indeed wonderful.

Pondless waterfalls

I have had questions lately about pondless watefalls. They are not all that different from regular ponds. First you dig a hole and line it. Put rocks around it. Then you build a waterfall. Fill the pond with water. Put a pump in a cylinder made just for pondless waterfalls. If you looked in my shop at my website, you will notice I do not sell them. There's a good reason for that and here it is:

You have dug the hole, built the waterfall, put the pump in the aforementioned cylinder, put the cylinder with pump in the water. Now you FILL UP THE POND WITH ROCKS. Some of you have already seen ahead far enough to see the problems coming. The water gets dirty. Grass clippings, leaves, dust, dirt from the air, doggy and kiddy toys all find their way into the water and eventually the pump needs to be cleaned. And where is it? Under all those ROCKS!! Hmmmmmm.

De-icing the pond

Here's some ways to keep a hole in the pond ice. Gases need to be exchanged so fish can survive.

On to the de-icing ideas:

Carolyn hooks up a hose to an inside tap and runs water over the ice. She has a dechlorinating device hooked to the hose.

Craig floats a flat black painted can wrapped in styrofoam to keep it from sinking. The black paint absorbs warmth and keeps a hole open in the ice.

I have used a milk jug with a rope tied to it and with a couple of cup of water in it so it stays in the water.

Or you can buy a de-icer that keeps a hole open.

Watch out for acid rain

Often we have protracted periods of no rain here in Louisiana and then day after day of heavy rains. During the rainless times, we usually have to add water because of evaporation, so that means we have to watch chlorine levels in the pond.

Then one day our hard rains will start. The pond fills and overflows. The overflowing is OK, but the rain is cleaning filthy air, air filled with the pollutants we put in it from our exhaust pipes, airplanes, chimneys and factories. All of that chemical waste is washed from the air onto our soil and into our ponds.

After the first rainfall following a dry time, watch your pond carefully. If your fish come to the top trying to breathe or your plants begin to yellow, change at least half your water. Don't forget to put dechlor in the new water.

Letters, we get letters

Jan:


I am 78 and am constructing my first water element. It is about finished. My problem is I am not quite sure how to handle the return water at the top of my 60 foot effort. It curves down hill and consists of two small ponds about 8 feet across and 8” deep and a 5000 gal pond that is 45 “ deep. I have installed a Savino CS 16000 skimmer that will hold an Easy Pro TH 750 5900 GPH connected to 60 feet of 2” PVC that will circulate at about 50 GPM. I have two small waterfalls coming out of the two small ponds and I do not want a large waterfall at the top of the element. I thought sinking a 50 gallon plastic drum and letting it flow into the top channel. Any ideas??


Thanks

pondlady sez:

You are using one pump for two waterfalls and also to get the water to the top channel? I will assume that is the case. If so, you may have some problems getting water that high with your pump. If you are already successful doing that, you could easily use a 50 gallon drum. You could also buy a spillway that already had a low spot for water to flow out. They are relatively cheap, but they do not have a real long shelf life. They are plastic and vulnerable to the sun.

I am also assuming your channel is lined with something, rubber liner or concrete. I am hoping for liner. Be careful that the water at the top channel drains onto the liner and not under or to the side of it.

One of the problems with 8" deep water that I have often run into is that a stick or leaves can fall into it and soon a few more and soon after, you have an unplanned dam and water flowing out the sides pumping the pond dry in the process.

Congratulations on doing your first water feature at 78. I was a child of 48 when I started my pond building business many years ago.

Best,

Jan

Time to start thinking

Happy New Year to everyone.

But now that the year end festivities are over and carnival is 7 weeks away here in NO, we can start giving a thought to what we are going to do with our gardens this spring. Some of us have recovered from Katrina destruction and are beginning to think of other things besides where the drywall people are. The PTSD is lifting, so we are beginning to believe we will live through this, or at least hope we will.
So what are we hoping for in the garden? Are we going to add a water garden after thinking about it for a year or so, or are we going to define an area in which to put one? That's a good start. So what are you thinking about? How about an indoor pond to make the den more relaxing? Or what about a pondless waterfall outdoors? What are your plans?

Koi: Did you know?

Fancy, different colored carp are called "nishikigoi," which literally means "brocaded carp" in Japanese.

Koi is short for nishikigoi. The story is that the word "koi' was first used by Confucius in 500 B.C. King Shoko, from Ro, gave Confucius a koi as a gift when Confucius' first son was born because carp were considered a symbol of strength.

This seems as good a story as any other.

Building a waterfall

Building a Waterfall

Building a waterfall is either simple or difficult depending on the point of view of the builder. We want them to look natural, like they just started happening in the rocks of our gardens, never mind that we had to buy the rocks because we live where no rock has ever been found like New Orleans where I live.

The easiest way to have a waterfall is to use a weir. A weir is a box that collect water that the pump has pumped into it. One side of the box is lower than the rest and has a lip on it so water will go over it.
These can be effective when building a waterfall. Simply elevate them above your pond, usually positioning them level on the dirt you have dug out to make your pond, put tubing from your pump in the weir.When the weir fills up, a sheet of water will fall over the weir and into your pond. You can hide the weir with rocks so no one can see the plastic box. Also, if you have a biofilter, you can put it in the weir. As an aside, if you do have a biofilter and use lava rocks in it, put them in several mesh bags, not just one. It takes several strong men to lift just one bag out, so use at least three. I usually float some hyacinths or other floating plants in the weir to further camouflage the plastic box.


Another, and my favorite way, is to start with a semi level surface, slightly raised in the back, starting at the same level as your pond. From there build the waterfall using the same kind of rocks you used in your pond construction. Start with large, flat and thin rocks. You can’t build a waterfall with round rocks or little ones either. After you put the first large rock down, run a hose over it to make sure the water flows into the pond. If it does not, shim up the back of the rock. If you don’t start on a slight angle, water will fall off the back and drain your pond dry in a few hours. Next, stack two or three thick and chunky rocks on each end of the bottom rock. Those rocks can be as much as 5 or 6” thick. Make sure they are flat on two sides because you are going to build the rest of your waterfall on top of them. If you have two large flat rocks on the ground level, you need more chunky rocks to rest the second level on.

Next place the second level of flat, thin and large rocks on the chunks. Again run water over to make sure the flow is going in the pond and not over the edge. Continue making levels until you like your waterfall or run out of rocks. Make your waterfall as wide as you wish, remembering that you may need more than one pump.

I have found that the easiest way for me to build the falls is for me to be in the water and have a couple of strong helpers placing rocks for me.

The back of the falls is equally important. Shimming must be done to keep the angle toward the pond and proper placement of rocks is most important to ensure stability of the falls.

Repairing a preformed pond

Usually when a preformed pond springs a leak, it is where the pond has ledges. We tend to step on the ledge when we get in the pond and because we have not seated it properly in the ground (almost an impossibility), it cracks. Now what?
I know of no way to patch a preformed hard plastic pond. I have heard of folks using Bondo, but have not seen it first hand. Because they are impossible to patch and crack so readily, I recommend against using them. If you wish to use a preformed pond, go to a feed store and buy a horse feeding trough. Rubbermaid makes them, they have a flat bottom, no ledges, are virtually indestructible and are much much cheaper than the preformed pond you find at the big box store.

Concrete ponds

I get calls from folks with pond problems. Here's one I got recently. A woman has a concrete pond with a huge crack in it. She hired a local pond professional to repair it and he guaranteed the repair. Neither she nor I know what he did, but he did not fix it. He has been back to try again a few times, but has failed each time. He now wants more money to continue to try. I told her that in my years of experience, you never, ever guarantee the repair of concrete. Most of the time concrete cannot be repaired. Just look at our expressways to see how brittle concrete is.

Our ground is always moving, water comes up and recedes, concrete freezes and thaws. Sadly it is not plastic, it is pretty solid and eventually cracks. The ONLY way I know to repair a crack in a concrete pond and this is definitely not guaranteed is to scrape out the crack, get it clean and dry and then use Plumbers' Epoxy and mash it in the crack. Make absolutely sure you are wearing rubber gloves while using Plumbers' Epoxy or you will be wearing the epoxy for weeks.
Remember this is not guaranteed, but it's the best I know.
And if somebody guarantees a concrete repair, do not believe them. They have not had enough pond experience.

Pond vacuum cleaners

I get letters about pond vacs. There are some that work great, but they are not cheap, nor are they perfect. Most of the letters I receive are asking about a cheap pond vac.


There are vacuum cleaners sold at swimming pool places. They look like large swimming pool blue dinner plates with a large hole in the center and attach to a garden hose. The force from the water going through the garden hose pushes the debris into a net that you have attached to the top of the 'dinner plate'. They will rarely do any good because they are best at removing leaves, etc., not clumped up dead algae. I have tried replacing the commercial net that you get when you by one of these, with an old panty hose leg and it works better, but still not great.

Ponds in a Warm Winter

We had a cold snap a week or so ago and the entire upper half of the US was hammered with snow, ice, high winds and just horrible weather. Here in New Orleans, we had temperatures in the 20's and that is really unusual.
Up north, ponds froze over, fish were at the bottom of the pond in torpor and we all thought winter was here. Wrong. It is now back to the 50's up north, ponds are no longer frozen and fish are swimming around happily.

The big question is "Do we feed our fish?"

I think not. The temps will drop again soon. It is dicey to feed fish when the temps are below 55 degrees anyway. Their digestive systems slow down and they may well have some problems with food. Any left over food will just stay in the water and decompose, thereby fouling the water.

Plant parasites

Pond plants can be infected with so many parasites. And the best way to find them is to get fish or plants from the wild. If you have the courage to walk into the swamps for plants (and I would not), then please take precautions with your plant treasures when you get home. Roots of wild plants can house parasites, fish eggs, snails, crawfish that will create havoc in your pond. If one plant has spider mites of caterpillars, your entire plant collection can become infected.
If you must collect from the wild, quarantine your collected plants for at least a month before introducing them to your pond. I often put a tablespoon of chlorox in the water just to make sure the bad critters are killed.

Winter pond days

When the temps are below freezing, or at least were last night, no one is out relaxing and enjoying their pond.
Check your water lily corms that you put in wet sand and then in plastic bags and stored in the garage. If they are mushy, throw them in the compost heap. If they are still firm, all is OK. You will pot them up in the spring. Until then, you can enjoy a picture of them.

If your pond freezes

You woke up this morning and your pond was iced over. You forgot to throw a semi filled water jug in the pond last night and now you have no hole in the ice through which gases can be exchanged. Do not hit the ice with a hammer. The shock can kill your fish. Get a pot of warm water and set it on the ice. That will thaw the ice. Now go find that jug, put a couple of cups of water in it and put it in your pond, so you can pull it out tomorrow morning.

In the 20s this morning

Good grief, it's cold for Southern Louisiana. My zinnias bit the dust, my mums are brown. The Louisiana Iris loves this weather and sticks up like the flag it is called in other parts of the world. My cassia is droopy but that's weight, not cold. The snaps, pansies and petunias are happy in their beds covered with a blanket of mulch so just their heads stick out. The pond looks lifeless with no water moving. The fish are at the bottom, not moving at all; it looks like they are barely breathing. But when the water warms they will wake up and be fine.

Here we go again

It's not even 40 degrees outside. And there's a wind, so it feel even colder. The pond is doing fine all by itself. I have removed the pump and tubing. Nothing will cause tubing to crack faster than sun and cold and we have both. One spring task I hate is having to replace cracked and leaking plastic tubing that usually can't be found until the water has been pumped out of the pond. The pump is cleaned and sitting in water in the garage. If a pump is stored dry, the seals are likely to dry out, crack and the pump will never work again. If you are at the beginning of winter, its time to tend to your pump and tubing. If you live in the American Midwest, let the tubing crack and stay inside until it warms up. It is too awful out there to worry about a few bucks worth of plastic tubes.