Garden Centre

Monday, October 6, 2008

Autumn ponds and how to care for them

That first warning snap of frost reminded me of a hellish task to come in the week ahead. Already the various plants around the pond are looking a little bit jaded and it’s about time to cut them back, paying a lot of attention to removing all the dead, dying and decaying growth because leaving it to pollute the water can cause the water quality to drop and can even affect the health of our fish. I really hate this task, as it requires pulling up the slimy stems of the water lilies and cutting them off so they don’t rot in the water – it’s supposed to be possible to do this in gloves without getting wet, but I lack whatever gene allows you to remain neat and tidy during dirty work, so I end up with green lily slime from my fingertips to my armpits and with my boots filled with nearly as much water as the pond!

The fish are still moving around a lot, partly because of lunatic owners trying to cut through water lily stems, but their activity will cease as the weather becomes colder and they become torpid. We’ll know when they start leaving the food that we throw in for them, although in mild winters they are greedy enough to keep chomping through until early January!

We have to cover a couple of our plants that are not fully hardy, with straw in old tights which we bend around the plant after it’s been cut back and wedge in between the big stones that surround the pond. And the final task before winter strikes is to fit some netting over one end of the pond which is particularly prone to getting filled with drifting leaves from the apple trees.

Labels: autumn pond, autumn tasks, hardy plants, waterlily

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:54 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, August 24, 2008

August garden - the pond

I seem to be spending far too much time giving the pond tender loving care! The water level drops as the sun makes the water evaporate (and both dogs and the cats from next door seem to drink an inordinate amount of pond water) and so I top it up with the hose. Then I see some blanket weed, so I go and get a bamboo cane and spend half an hour trying to get it out of the pond, which is like trying to wrap spaghetti round a single chopstick using your left hand only!

Assuming I actually get the blanket weed out of the pond, I then see what it’s been hiding: a couple of yellowing and rotting waterlily pads, so I go and get the net and the long cutters and try to cut through the waterlily stem and catch the rotting leaf in the net, which is a bit like one of those grab machines you get in amusement arcades with which you try to get hold of a Rolex watch and never succeed. It’s absolutely essential to keep going until I succeed though, because if I don’t, the debris from the decaying plant material will add nutrients to the water, resulting in the growth of algae. And because we have fish in the pond we don’t want algae. Finally, while I’m there, I realise that I might as well check the filter for blockages … and that’s most of the day gone!

But there are compensations: the lilies, the mayflies, the sound of the cascade, the dappled light on water … there are worse ways of wasting a day, that’s for sure.

Labels: garden ponds, water plants, waterlily

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:28 PM 0 Comments

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