It has came to my attention that some pond maintenance people are being rather liberal in their use of salt. Now before I go into a rant, every situation is different and each pond has different needs, but chances are you don't want to use salt in your pond. If you have a 'Koi Pond' or 'Reflecting Pool' than go a head, but if you have a water garden you don't want salt! Let me be more specific, if you have ANY plants in your pond do not use salt. These companies have listened to their 'koi guy' and assumed that one situation fits all. Koi like a little salt in their water, it is a great treatment for their health and to protect their slime coat. Most basic parasites can be taken care of with a salt dip. But if you have any plants, over 1% salt can begin to damage floating plants and much more will damage or kill most pond plants.
Here's another circumstance that you need to keep in mind. If you have your pond set at 1% salt and do a water change, you still have nearly 1% salt. If your water evaporates, the salt does not. Make sure to check your salt level before adding more, because chances are you mainly have the percent before the water change or loss. If you have any plants and you have maintenance done with salt they are probably going to put too much in. If you have salt before the change, and they add more you probably have way too much.
Once again, if you have a koi pond or other non-plant pond, go ahead with in reason. Even without plants you don't want over 3-4% unless you have spoken with a koi specialist. We have treated sick fish with 7%, but they get really slow and they can die with prolonged exposure or any greater percent. Now I do not claim to be an expert with koi, so make sure to talk to an expert before doing anything with salt treatments. But make sure to remember that if you do much over 1% salt, you're going to really damage some plants. Just something to ponder.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Spring Plant Care
Re-potting and overall care of your water plants is very important to pond health and ease of maintenance. If you don't at least take a look at your lilies, marginals, and/or lotus you will kick yourself down the road.
Not dividing your lilies drastically changes their appearance and health. Lilies can very quickly jump their pot and grow into the other strata of your pond. Trust me, as someone who does maintenance, you don't want to mess with this. Especially if you rocked the bottom of your pond. Not dividing will also change the appearance of your lilies. As they crowd the pot, and each other, the leaves will stand out of the water and the plant will not bloom nearly as often or as well.
Lotus are a less common water plant, but are so stunning they should be in every water garden. There are multiple sizes of this plant, so even with a small pond, you can find a complimentary lotus. Propagation of lotus can be difficult due to very delicate growth tips. You must find the 'knuckles' behind the tubers and cut behind that narrowing point, than replant and cover the tuber. It doesn't sound that difficult, but care must be taken.
Marginals are usually much easier to re-pot than the other water plants, but many of them are aggressive and just as important to care for. Unless you are going to keep a yearly eye on certain marginals, I would suggest not even putting them in your pond. Make sure to check how aggressive or invasive certain plants are if they are planted directly into your pond or if you will not be cutting them back at least once a year. There are so many different plants that can be called marginal I won't go into specifics, but most can simply be divided and re-potted. The one point I will focus on is if these marginals are exceptionally good filter plants, consider potting them in a mesh pot with pea gravel alone. If a great filter plant, such as pickerel or thalia, is planted directly into pea gravel the roots have even more contact with water and filter that much better. As I said before, make sure the plants you use are not too aggressive if you aren't going to tend to them during the year.
Make sure to talk to a local specialist or contact us for more in depth information about plant maintenance. Also consider fertilization, especially with lotus and lilies, due the their heavy feeding habits. Good luck with your spring ponding.
Not dividing your lilies drastically changes their appearance and health. Lilies can very quickly jump their pot and grow into the other strata of your pond. Trust me, as someone who does maintenance, you don't want to mess with this. Especially if you rocked the bottom of your pond. Not dividing will also change the appearance of your lilies. As they crowd the pot, and each other, the leaves will stand out of the water and the plant will not bloom nearly as often or as well.
Lotus are a less common water plant, but are so stunning they should be in every water garden. There are multiple sizes of this plant, so even with a small pond, you can find a complimentary lotus. Propagation of lotus can be difficult due to very delicate growth tips. You must find the 'knuckles' behind the tubers and cut behind that narrowing point, than replant and cover the tuber. It doesn't sound that difficult, but care must be taken.
Marginals are usually much easier to re-pot than the other water plants, but many of them are aggressive and just as important to care for. Unless you are going to keep a yearly eye on certain marginals, I would suggest not even putting them in your pond. Make sure to check how aggressive or invasive certain plants are if they are planted directly into your pond or if you will not be cutting them back at least once a year. There are so many different plants that can be called marginal I won't go into specifics, but most can simply be divided and re-potted. The one point I will focus on is if these marginals are exceptionally good filter plants, consider potting them in a mesh pot with pea gravel alone. If a great filter plant, such as pickerel or thalia, is planted directly into pea gravel the roots have even more contact with water and filter that much better. As I said before, make sure the plants you use are not too aggressive if you aren't going to tend to them during the year.
Make sure to talk to a local specialist or contact us for more in depth information about plant maintenance. Also consider fertilization, especially with lotus and lilies, due the their heavy feeding habits. Good luck with your spring ponding.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Maintenance
After a long day of pond cleaning, I thought I would make a few comments while its still fresh in my mind.
First, unless you really, really want to, don't put rock in the bottom of your pond. It really is a maintenance nightmare. Some say that this rock will act as your biological filter, unless you have a lot of gph moving through your pond it won't. Everything that dies or floats to the bottom of your pond will turn to unhealthy anaerobic material. Than you have to take all that rock out to really clean your pond. Secondly, all that pretty rock you just paid for, is covered in algae and looks the same as the liner you covered.
Second, keep ALL plants in a pot. Just like the liner, that pot will be covered in algae and blend in soon enough. I just spent two hours pulling iris and cat tails out of sulfur smelling muck. If it had been potted, it would have taken ten minutes. Lilies and marginals can jump pots, but a knife and repotting can take care of that in a few minutes per plant.
Third, don't put out you hyacinth and other tropicals yet. I'm in the midwest with a week of freezing nights in the forcast, even though it was almost 80 today. Don't be fooled by the warm weather early, you'll have to buy your plants twice. And as far as tropical lilies, make sure the water is conistently around 70 degrees, it won't do much of anything until the water temperature raises.
Of course all of these suggestions are regionally based, and there are different points of view, especially with rocked ponds. Each region and individual pond has its own ecosystems, ask around and see what works best for ponders around you. I do quite a few maintenance jobs a season, so I have first hand experience with these things, and I would gladly clean three un-rocked and only pottend ponds than one rocked pond with unpotted plants. Something to think about.
First, unless you really, really want to, don't put rock in the bottom of your pond. It really is a maintenance nightmare. Some say that this rock will act as your biological filter, unless you have a lot of gph moving through your pond it won't. Everything that dies or floats to the bottom of your pond will turn to unhealthy anaerobic material. Than you have to take all that rock out to really clean your pond. Secondly, all that pretty rock you just paid for, is covered in algae and looks the same as the liner you covered.
Second, keep ALL plants in a pot. Just like the liner, that pot will be covered in algae and blend in soon enough. I just spent two hours pulling iris and cat tails out of sulfur smelling muck. If it had been potted, it would have taken ten minutes. Lilies and marginals can jump pots, but a knife and repotting can take care of that in a few minutes per plant.
Third, don't put out you hyacinth and other tropicals yet. I'm in the midwest with a week of freezing nights in the forcast, even though it was almost 80 today. Don't be fooled by the warm weather early, you'll have to buy your plants twice. And as far as tropical lilies, make sure the water is conistently around 70 degrees, it won't do much of anything until the water temperature raises.
Of course all of these suggestions are regionally based, and there are different points of view, especially with rocked ponds. Each region and individual pond has its own ecosystems, ask around and see what works best for ponders around you. I do quite a few maintenance jobs a season, so I have first hand experience with these things, and I would gladly clean three un-rocked and only pottend ponds than one rocked pond with unpotted plants. Something to think about.
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