Umbrella Plant care and planting instructionsCyperus AlternifoliusThis is a popular pond plant, with erect stems, each crowned, umbrella like fashion, with long, narrow, radiating leaves. Planting instructionsCan be grown in a pond, submerged to 3” above the soil level, or kept moist in a container. Submerged in pond the container can have only gravel in it soil is not necessary It also makes a great plant to grow on your porch, or deck. Grows to 3 to 6.5 feet tall, It is cold hardy to about 20 F. These are bare root plants, and have been inspected and cleared for shipment. We are a legally licensed Nursery, and every shipment is certified and stamped on the outside of the shipping box. Pond Building ideas
When constructing a pond your water features that you want need to be incorporated into the plans. Things like electrical, plumbing water lines and the like should be doubled up. Wire is cheap and water pipes are cheap by comparison when considering that if they fail , the cost of replacement in hours and the inconviance . When I construct any pond , I have always doubled the plumbing and electrical wiring.
Thinking ahead for were you want extra outlets for pumps , lights and the sort is very important. Pre plumbing in all of that in advance of installing a liner, or a concrete bottom is very important. simply leave the extra plumbing capped off at ground level or if you use an in ground utility access box you can leave all extra plumbing and wires in that location. You will find that if you do this it will pay off.
As the pond ages and things do fail ,you will have backups in place already. Think ahead , and plan for other extras as well.
I even put in 2" gray electrical pipe , just to be sure that if I did want to cross the pond, or need a phone line run or another power outlet, the pipe is in place to be used. Night lighting should be considered as well, path lights for around the pond can be solar, however they do not provide ample lighting if you wish to have a well lit path, or broad area lights.. If 110 volt is needed for out lets, lights or timers for pumps, be sure to plan that all into the preconstruction plans. All this will save you time and expenses later on. As you pre plan , you will understand the importance of it. It also gives you a chance to get more ideas about what you want.
These ideas are mostly for large ponds , but also are helpful to the small pond builder.
Happy Ponding
What plants could you use for your pond?
I have been often asked about what plants are most beneficial to a pond. That really is a loaded question and answers can vary according to pond size.
I always recommend Water Hyacinths as a starter plant, it provides the best nitrate removal of all the pond plants I have tested. Nitrates are caused many from fish waste . They also are raised however with debris from leaves and bird droppings and the like. A low nitrate level also causes algae to not want to grow well in your pond , high nitrate levels will cause green water and string algaes.
As far as how many plants are needed , that varies with pond size. Surface area is more important than gallons . One water hyacinth can occupy up to 1.0 sure feet of surface area. Thats full grown of course. Water Hyacinths can group together up to 200 plants within 6 square feet. Thier root system is built to remove sediments and to remove other harmful things in your pond.
The next plant that I recommend to any pond owner, is Parrots Feather, this plant however can be very invasive. If you live in a area that the water does not freeze on the top of your pond AND you have a soil bottom pond , do not use this plant! Once it is put in a soil bottomed pond it will be there forever. You will never get ride of it, unless your climate is cold enough for the water on top of your pond to freeze. That will kill it.
Duckweed and or Fairy Moss are good plants as well unless you have a skimmer system, they will plug up a skimmer.
Elephants Ear is a great choice as well , especially the free floating variety. It can float free in your pond, and had no need to be potted.
Penny wort is also a good choice it floats free in the pond as well.
I will never sell , or recommend any under water oxygenators like Hydrilla or Hornwort, Anacharis or any other underwater oxygenator, as the are all very difficult to remove from any soil bottom pond and most of them are very invasive. You have to understand that once they are put in your pond and they root to the bottom , you will never get rid of them and they are a maintainace nightmare.
I have a customer that has a soil bottomed pond and he curses that day he put those plants in it. The Anacharis has now grown from side to side and he manually removes several hundred pounds of it every month from his pond.
He is now even considering copper treating his pond to serialize it, and to start over. I DO NOT recommend this at all, copper products are toxic to everything in your pond and the residuals left behind can cause problems for years.
I hope that some of this information was helpful and remember to vote yes at the bottom , if it was!
Happy PondingWhat kind of, or size of barley ball works best?This is the most often asked question I recieve in my Emaled questions. In all our listings the gallonage of ponds that size barley ball works in is stated in the listing. As far as kind of Barley, it really doesnt make a difference at all if it is Organic or not. In fact, Organic barley can have problems with weeds in it. Think about it for a moment. "Organic", no sprays during the growing season for weeds. Now think about this, a farmer has 300 acres of Barley planted, is he going to hire someone to pull weeds in those 300 acres , when he sells barley at about 25$ a acre for the straw.? No Preseeded Organic Barley, what is it?, they claim it works better and sooner than regular barley. Does it? Well think about that also, first you have "organic". what is that ? A pure material with nothing added during the growing season, and nothing added during processing. Then you have a secret "Preseeded" a additive of some sort added to the "organic" . You can figure that one out. The scientific evidence of how barley works, is provided in one of my other guides. That guide provides scientific facts about the process of Barley use in ponds. It does not provide "witch doctor" claims of one product being better than another to help boost sales. Here is another Fact. The Rat ball , Pet ball , Hamster ball that is used by some for the distribution of barley in ponds, was NEVER designed or built with barley distribution in mind. It was made for a Rodent to run around in. Use of straw for filtering water along side roadways, construction zones and logging areas has been used for years. You may have seen them along side roads , the straw packed into long net tubes and then placed across ditches? These net tubes have the ability to FILTER out water sediments and the runoff waters flow thru them basically unrestricted. Now if the water did not do that , and there was not free flow because it was compacted, would that product be used for that? Some sellers claim Barley balls that are put into netting cause compaction issues and stops water flow. Scare tatic! thats all it is . They are simply trying to get you to buy thier poorly conceived plastic Rat ball , that was not designed for barley distribution. The Rat ball has only about a 25% water flow thru capability. A net ball has 98%! They even try to say than that the net balls trap small fry fish. A 3/32 net does not have a problem with that. A lot of research was put into this before we selected a custom made net size for our product. Our net products are even patented. The netting we use is sent to koi pnds owners and even a koi distributor that raises Koi, and they have reported 0 problems. Then some sellers reach for the last straw they can and tout customer service for thier product , like there needs to be?. You place the ball in the pond , it does the work, what possible "secret" customer service information could they have? There is none, just another attempt to use scare tactics to sell a product. Anyone that sells a product ,will answer questions after the sale, if need be. All these issues that are brought up are simply put, scare tactics of a salesperson looking for ways to increase thier bank accounts and decrease yours. You as a customer need to decide who you will deal with, a seller that deals with facts, or one that does not ?. That is your choice. Happy Ponding! Water hyacinthsWater hyacinths are very easy to grow. First , you should purchase them from a licenced nursery . A licenced nursery that strictly sells plants and no fish or other water garden products, will have much less of a chance of having plants that are infected. Often, sellers of multiple products will mix plants in with thier fish , and snails that are for sale. To treat the plants with Potassium Permanganate is a answer, however, the treatment will NOT kill many types of snails that have trap doors, such as the Zebra snail that is highly invassive. This snail has been found in the Central valley area of California, Sacramento and Fresno areas. Birds from these areas have been known to spread the snail from place to place. A bird can stand in a mud bank area that is infected get the snails on it feet and then carry the snails to other locations. Fishermen with waders have been doing the same thing. By buying from a seller of only nursery products, insures that you are getting plants that have not been put in with fish. When you get your plants , add them to your pond. Simply put them in the water with roots down. Many times it will take a week or so for the plants to float totally upright. As the night time temps raise up to above 68 deg, the plants will start putting on flowers. Water hyacinths are considered to be invassive as well, they can reproducce at the rate of 1 plant every 10 days per mother plant. Thin them out as needed. Now lets kill some rumors about the plants. There is no mini or dwarf water hyacinths, there is no dark green special strain of plant. The more shade a water hyacinth has , the darker the green it will be.The more shade it has and the tighter they are grown together the taller they will be. Light green or yellow plants and small plants have too much sun, and are stunted from the lack of nutriants in the water. To grow water hyacinths , it really is as simple as tossing them in the pond. Happy ponding Please Contact us For Any Tips |
