Overwintering your pond

I am often asked whether plants and fish can live in the pond throughout the winter.
The biggest influence on overwintering the pond is your freeze line and the depth of your pond.

Your county extension agent will know your freeze line. If you don't use your county extension office for information office for info, start doing so. They are a valuable resource.

Your pond must be deeper than your freeze line.

I do not know your freeze line, I live in New Orleans where we don't have a freeze line.

Preparing for Winter

Fall is upon us. And we have to do some winter prep with our ponds. When the temps drop below 55 degrees F, it's time to move water lilles from the pond.

If you have a greenhouse, move your waterlily inside. Put it in a tub or small pond. Don't disturb the roots, Let the plant keep growing until it becomes dormant and leave it in the greenhouse until new leaves come up again the spring.

Once the plant is no longer dormant, you can divide and repot in fresh soil for the growing season.

If the temperatures dip below 55 in your greenhouse, this method wil not work.

Preparing your pond for winter

Fall really is coming, sometime

I know we have had insufferably hot weather for seemingly months on end now. Some of us have had no rain, others have had more than they ever wanted to see.

But fall is really coming. And in the fall we have to start buttoning up our ponds for winter. i will be spotlighting necessary actions to get through chilly weather and into icy weather.
Now that the days are shortening, you are noticing your water lilies are not blooming as much and the new leaves are getting smaller. They are going into dormancy. If your weather is dropping below 60 degrees at night, stop fertilizing your lilies and let them continue into dormancy. Stimulating new growth this time of year can leave your lilies open for damage from an early freeze.

Snakes in the pond

I get many letters asking how to catch and kill a snake in the pond. We build these backyard resorts for wildlife and then want to make a gated community out of that resort. Snakes are much more afraid of you than you are of them. There are only a few poisonous snakes and even those are afraid of you. If you must rid your pond of snakes, you can probably catch them in a net and relocate it in nearby water.
Remember snakes eat toads, frogs, rats, mice, bugs and all matter of nasty vermin. Be glad to have snakes in your pond.

Remember, there is no such thing as one snake.

Fall is coming

I know it's almost September, but you have time to cut back and repot your pond plants before cold weather sets in. They are such fast growers, they can develop a strong root system in plenty of time.

Pond Spitters

Isn't spitter an awful name for a statue that has water pumped through it? Frankly, I am not a spitter fan, although there are some fine pieces of statuary out there that I do love.
One thing spitters do in our time of water crises is cut down on evaporation and therefore use less water. The folks who are supposed to know such things say that in 6 more years, we will not have enough potable water to sustain our evergrowing population, so we must change our habits.
One of the ways to conserve water is to build a rain garden.

Algae

Green water is often a problem in full sun and well fertilized plants. Do not use chemicals to control the algae--it will kill your lilies. Instead, encourage a healthy growth of submerged plants like anacharis one bunch per square foot of surface area, which will help starve out the algae. Some floating hyacinths or water lettuce will also help, but watch they do not get out of control.

Our heat emergency

During our August heat, when our temperatures are reaching 100 degrees F and over, serious oxygen depletion takes place in the pond. Do not turn off your pump. Let it run 24 hours a day. Consider adding supplementary oxygen. Add an extra pump or bubbler.

Treating for Aphid Infestation

I have been getting many calls and emails about treating for aphids on water lilies, so this bears repeating:


The following technique can be used to treat water lilies for aphid infestation without harm to your fish. Aphids and many other garden pests can be easily controlled with an inexpensive, homemade insecticide--according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This recipe was developed after entomologists at the Agriculture Research Center in Phoenix, Arizona, discovered that a spray of soybean oil protected cotton from aphids and whiteflies. Home gardeners should mix one tablespoon of dishwashing detergent with one cup of cooking oil. When pests strike, mix one to two and one half teaspoons of the detergent oil mix with one cup of water. The detergent causes the oil to emulsify in the water. It can be sprayed on the water lilies every ten days. Besides aphids, the mixture works against whiteflies and spider mites. It has been successfully tested on eggplants, carrots, lettuce, celery, watermelon, peppers and cucumbers. It tends to burn the leaves of squash, cauliflower and red cabbage.

An Enormous Pond

Large ponds are so much easier to manage than smaller ones. The water does not get too hot and bake the fish or plants in the summer. The large pond can correct our mistakes easily and right its ecobalance quickly. Rarely are there huge differences in pH from one day to the next. If you have the space, build a large pond. It will make pond maintenance so much easier.

Troubleshooting your pond

I have a new pond troubleshooting article out. Check it out and always remember to look for the easy problems first

Troubleshooting your pond

Collecting wild plants

Finding plants

If you collect plants from local swamps or trade them with friends, buy from an unfamiliar plant store, please quarantine those plants for a few weeks. Put them in a washtub or kiddie pool with a bit of chlorox in the water.

Parasites, lice, fish eggs, caterpillars and so many other critters can be carried in on those plants and play havoc with your goldfish, your beloved koi and all your aquatic plants.

Patching a pond liner

A strong wind toppled your crane statue into the pond and his beak penetrated your rubber liner. Now what?

Empty the pond to below the hole. Clean the area around the penetration even if you have to scrub it (NO SOAP), rinse it and either wait until it is dry or use a hair dryer. Make sure you are plugged into a GFI outlet for safety's sake. When the area is clean and dry, you can use a tire patch to patch the hole. After all, the rubber liner is made by Firestone out of the same material inner tubes are made of. You can also buy patches or rolls of patching tape that makes it even easier.

Stumps and ponds

The trials of a pond installer:

I will never forget starting an excavation for a pond when I found right in the middle of where the pond was to go, a brand new, just cut, not ground stump. I queried the homeowner who professed complete innocence of how a 24" stump could have gotten dead center in her yard.

I ask all clients ahead of time if I might find any obstacles, like old roots, electrical wires, sprinkler systems, water or gas pipes. She emphatically told me, "No."

So here's this stump and I have to do something. She was grinning, thinking I would have to remove her stump free (I stuck to my estimates.) and she had gotten over. Nope. I dug around the stump, put the liner over it. When the pond was finished the stump hump was dead center. I put a couple of rocks on top and called it an island. I dared her not to like it. She didn't dare not. I got my check and she got a large island. It looked pretty good, but usually when I wanted islands, I put them on top of the liner, not underneath.

Difficult clients are lying in wait out there and all service folks run into them.

Sterile fish?

Question:
Here in California, where the weather is nice all year round. I've been growing Koi for 7 years now, although my fish are healthy and large, I still have not had a spawning. I have heard that my supplier may sell sterile Koi. Has anyone else ever heard of such practice?

Pondlady sez:

I have never heard of sterilizing a fish, but it could be in response to the ever growing ban on keeping koi. When I first heard about it, I couldn't quite believe it, but then we got a news clipping of a fine levied on koi keepers. Evidently the fear is that the koi will get loose and crowd out native species. I'm not sure how little bitty fish would be sterilized, but there could be a way.

Another possibility is that your fish are indeed spawning, but momma and daddy are eating their young.

Gophers and pond liners

Question:
We have gophers!!! They have eaten through my liner. What can I do to stop them?

Pondlady sez:

Put lots of chicken wire down first, and then the roofing felt before you put the new liner in. This works for rats. It should work for gophers.

Plants for your rain garden

And if you don't have a rain garden built yet, here are some plants for wet areas in your garden:

Arrowwood viburnum shrubs
Swamp milkweed, which is a good butterfly plant
Elephant ear plants--this is a tropical plant and is the only one that will not survive in lower zones.
Wild bergamot
Marsh marigolds.
Here in Louisiana our swamps are full of marsh marigolds. I think they are a cousin of hibiscus or mallow because flowers look the same. Louisianians call them marshmallows. Doncha love it?

I have my rain garden planted and it is filling in slowly. Be sure, when you remove the sod, you remove it all. I didn't do a great job, so spent several hours on my hands and knees, sinking into some pretty stinky water getting the rest of the grass out.

Flowers from the garden

With the New Orleans heat upon us, the summer flowers are beginning to put on a show.

Cuphea Torpedo. I think the common name is bat faced heather. Fierce looking isn't he?



My caladium is flowering already


I wanted a grey plant and chose a wonderful aromatic curry plant.


I found some Amazon dianthus. Huge and gorgeous.

Pond on the cheap

You can't skimp on a liner or a pump, but you can build your pond without rocks. Use landscape timbers. Build them up like Lincoln Logs in any shape you wish. You have to use about 16 penny nails, so be prepared to whack at them with at least a heavy roofing hammer. When you have it as high as you wish, line the inside with roofing felt and drop the liner in. Fill up the pond and then use a 1 x 4 to finish the top. If you wish, you can have a waterfall in a corner, but a bubbler in the middle is just as nice.

Leeches

Pond questions - leeches

I'm planning to do a bit of pond cleaning one of these days. I'm not looking forward to it though due to me finding a large number of leaches below one of several rocks in my pond. They're quite small, about 1 cm in length, probably because there isn't much in the pond to suck blood out of. I've got about 20 goldfish in the pond and I've never seen one of them with a leach attached to it.

Is it normal to have leaches in ponds?
Where did they come from?
Is it safe to get in the water without getting some horrible disease from them?
Will the leaches latch onto the goldfish, or will my fish eat the
leeches? (probably both)

Answer:
Leeches or blood worms are harmless and quite normal in ponds, although we don't like them. They can help your pond by eating some of the organic matter trapped in your filter. They will be eaten readily by the fish and are carried in, as eggs, in bird poop. Birds are the carrier host. The type primarily found in our ponds are not the swimming type, so the fish are safe for the most part and they will usually be found in filter matting where the fish can't get them.