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Water Gardening With Ritters Nursery Ritters Florist and Nursery is the place to go for expert advice and supplies for both beginning and veteran pond keepers. With a wide selection of both bog and water plants, pumps, liners and chemicals, we have what you need to get started with the gardening worlds fastest growing hobby. The information below should help you get started on your water gardening project. Planting the Pond Submerged or Oxygenater Plants: For a pond free of algae you will find these inexpensive plants an absolute necessity. They can simply be potted in small pots of gravel to hold them onto the bottom of the pond. For good algae control you will need one of these bunches for every two square feet of pond surface. Three of the best of these plants are: Cabomba, Elodea, Hornwort. Floating Plants: Floating plants can help to control problem algae in a pond. This includes all plants with leaves that float on the surface of the pond. Some, such as Duckweed, Azolla, Water Hyacinth and Frogbit float freely on the surface of the pond. The shading effect of these plants help to cut down on algae growth by blocking out sunlight (cover at least 2/3 of the pond surface for proper algae control). They also provide hiding places for fish and in the case of the dangling roots of the free-floating plants a place for fish to lay their eggs. Here is a selection of floaters: Water Lilies, Azolla, Water Hyacinth, Water Poppy, Duckweed. Emergent or Bog Plants: These are plants that have their roots in the ground under water (for at least part of the year) and hold their stems and leaves above the water. Water lotus, sedges, cattails and some irises are good examples of these plants. Some of these plants need to dry out seasonally, such as siberian iris, and will need to be wintered in the garden and not in the pond. Some of our favorite emergents: Pickerel, Lizard's Tail, Cattails, Creeping Jenny, Spiral Rush, Northern Blue Flag. Pond Maintenance Filters and Pumps: If your pond has a filter system, you will want to clean it and make any necessary repairs to it. Pumps should be disconnected and cleaned periodically. Just a small amount of sediment stuck to the impellers will reduce the water flow considerably. Winter Damage: The freezing and thawing in the winter can loosen copingstone from the edge of the pond and stones from a waterfall or stream. Spring is the time to make those repairs, be very careful not to get any mortar into the pond the cement in to mortar is very poisonous to any fish in the pond. General Pond Cleanup: Any dead plant material left in the pond should be removed, such as leaves, branches, twigs and bog plants that may have dead or dying leaves. Leaving this material in the pond may cause an outbreak of filamentous algae as it decomposes in the pond. Divide and Fertilize: Spring and fall are the best times to remove all potted plants from the pond to be transplanted into larger pots or divided and replanted. Most aquatic plants grow quickly and need to be divided once every year. If your doing this in the spring, now would be a good time to fertilize your plants with a time-release fertilizer made for aquatic plants. Plants planted along the edge of the pond should be cleaned up and divided if necessary. Pest Control: Most aquatic plants don't have a lot of pest problems, which is great since applying chemicals to control them would be difficult if not impossible. Probably the most common pest would be aphids. The easiest control for them is to submerge the infected leaves and wash off the aphids. There are also some aphid controls on the market made of thyme and mint oil that are fairly effective and not harmful to other inhabitants of the pond. Filtration: Is it necessary? This all depends on the pond and what is in it. A medium to large pond with an abundance of plants, invertebrates (insects, fresh water shrimp and snails), microorganisms and very few fish and amphibians will probably not need a filtration system other than for protection of the pump. However, many people can't resist overstocking with fish and do not start with enough plant material needed for the size of pond installed. Think about it, how does nature keep her water clean? This is done with a proper balance of plant and animal life in the pond. If any element in this equation is out of balance, then the pond will have problems until it is corrected. Mechanical Filtration:Mechanical filters are the least expensive to purchase, but require the most maintenance. These filters circulate the water from the pond thorough some sort of filter medium with the use of a pump. These filters need to be cleaned often, from every five days to as often as twice a day during hot weather. You will need to calculate the volume of water in your pond before purchasing the filter or the pump to run it (some times you can buy pump and filter as a kit). This is done easily with a simple formulat (length x width x average depth = cubic ft) x 7.5 = volume in gallons. Mechanical filters are fine for small ponds with too many fish in them. Your pump should move all the water through the filter once every two hours or less. Biological Filtration: Biological filters are generally larger than mechanical filters, but are easily hidden in a waterfall or at the head of a stream. The pumps needed for them does not need to be as powerful since you only need to turn over the water in the pond once every four to six hours. These designs are nice in that the spillway can be incorporated into the waterfall and you can float some sort of fast growing plant such as water hyacinth for an added cleaning benefit. The price tag on this type of filter is high, but for those wanting to keep large fish such as koi, they are an absolute necessity. Green Filter or Bog Filter: This is not a filter at all, but this is the most natural way to remove impurities and excess nutrients from the pond. The water from the pond is slowly moved through a heavily planted bog or shallow pond. You need to choose plants that grow rapidly so that the excess nutrients from the pond are used up rapidly. While the bog should be bigger than the pond itself, this is not always feasible. However even a small green filter worked into the plan of the pond can be a benefit to it's health, not to mention the chance to keep some species of plants that may not survive the constant feeding of the koi. |
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