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What i did last weekend

3K views 18 replies 7 participants last post by  jeepguy 
#1 ·
I found out my wife was leaving town with her sister for a long weekend so I figured she can't say no if she gets home and its done already. :icon_twis
So I went ahead and ordered everything I would need and hid it away until I was ready. Friday the digging began, Saturday the double layered billboard liner($125 shipped) was laid. Sunday I got stone and the washing commenced. Still have some more work to go.
Plants currently include:
various canna lillies
pickerel rush
dwarf umbrella
cardinal plant
locally collected rush
locally collect hornwort
creeping jenny
calla lillies
various host as
inpatients
obedient plant
giant elephant ear
day lillies
still looking for some taller grasses
 

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#4 ·
Thanks. My little helper was at my side the whole time. This pic was Monday morning. Still had to create the cascade from the upstream section to the pond section. Finished that all this morning. Still have a lot of work to do with gravel and plant placement.
Bushkill, i thought like this, if she wants it taken down, that takes away from time of finishing the bathroom and the basement, which she wants done desperately. It will have some time to grow on her.

Question, how do you fertilize your plants? My water hyacinth has completely melted and I don't want to lose anything else. I have been dumping osmocote plus tabs in each planter but what about floating plants or mosses?
 

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#5 ·
Well, the wife came home, and wasn't pleased. After about an hour she cooled down enough to talk. Turns out she knew I was up to something, but not this.
After showing her all the lilies and how little it actually cost this morning she calmed down and admitted that it was nice, but I was still in the doghouse.
Total cost
Liner-$138 shipped
Plants- about $75
Stone-$100(about 2.5 tons of river gravel)
1800gph pump-$35
Prefilter-$10
Plumbing-$20
2000gph Waterfall weir-$26 shipped
Plant baskets-$12
Pool filter sand-$10
Total-$426
The waterfall box filters water through pool filter sand with a void at the bottom where the water comes in and stones on top to keep the sand in. If I ever stop disturbing the water it may clear up completely.
Current fish include 2 baby koi and about 10 minnows. The koi will come in during the winter time to a pool in the basement.
The pond is 36" deep but after stone and gravel the deepest accessible spot is about 25".
Netting is my next project.
 
#7 ·
Thanks. That makes sense about the cold. I have 1 that did survive and has begun to spit already.
All plants in the pond are in planters with the lips out of water. Roots that grow out of the planter are up for grabs I guess. A majority of the plants are either upstream which is inaccessible to the koi or in planters.
It wasn't bad digging. This part of my yard had been backfilled in the past. My town was all swampland being right next to the Delaware. So a lot of smaller stones but nothing a little alcohol and sweat couldn't handle.
 

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#8 ·
in addition to the cold, I saw a pump and waterfall weir among the list of equipment all of which cause surface agitation I would expect- water hyacinth can't stand surface agitation like most surface floaters and quickly rots with water movement. You need an area with no surface movement for proper floater growth. Of course, the cold could have been a contributing factor or the sole cause. Just food for thought...
 
#9 · (Edited)
Hmm. Didn't think of that either. The weir is upstream and the cascade into the pond is minimal.

So I lost a koi. Figure either one of the many stray cats in the neighborhood or a heron, just two days in. Soo, ran out to Home Depot today and got bird netting and picked up two more koi. I will wait to figure out the sexes and find a home for the odd man(or woman) out. I don't really want babies. I want the pond under stocked and low maintenance as possible, as in natural filtration using lots of plants. Also picked up a bunch of peppermint plants to help repel bugs and placed two water lilies in buckets in the shallow end of the pool to provide a little more shade.
Here is a shot of the two new additions enjoying the shade. You can see a lot of the minnows to the left.
 

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#11 ·
Do you mind if I pick your canna brain?
I bought some various cannas and upon receipt a few of the leaves melted(they were kept inside until temps warmer up but a few had already started to send up leaves), well a few of the leaves have melted which I cut off when they got mushy. Now the rhizome has a few new nubs on it. Are these new stems or new rhizomes budding off? Thanks!
I have about 6 lbs of k2so4 which I have been dry dosing about a tablespoon every few days.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the reply. Most have definately become new stems and already producing leaves. We had a few hot days and they definately soaked up the sun.
I rebuilt the bridge for a little more safety because my son is on it nonstop when we are outside. I'm sure he will be swimming in it by the end of the summer.
Got some phlox and hosta to plant around the pond, as well as a tiger lotus and an identified lily waiting to sprout.
All of the water hyacinth has died, and I'm on the fence whether or not to buy more.
I took my son fishing the other day and he caught his first fish, a beautiful nice sized red breasted sunfish, although he wanted nothing to do with it once out of the water. But I scored myself and dug up a few arrum(sp?) plants and some sweet grass for along the length of the stream.
Sorry the pics are blurry, my phone even though has a 41 megapixel camera just won't focus nowadays.

Bump:
 

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#14 ·
Wow, lookin great. Grats to your son on his fish catch. I see that you're in NJ. I'm really unfamiliar w/ weather patterns out there, but I know over here in CO it's still too cold (at night) for floaters to go out. Usually I recommend to guests where I work that we wait til night-time temperatures are consistently above about 55 degrees before hyacinth can safely go out. Maybe if you've had some chilly nights up there, it got to them. If you do wanna try em again, I'd wait til weather is much warmer.
 
#15 ·
Thanks again. I will wait and see and watch if nutrients become an issue or not to decide to add floaters. I ordered 500+ duckweed for the stream section and will use it to feed the koi. I currently estimate the water volume around 1200 gallons based on a few calculators.
I am still working on flow and am trying to keep wattage down. I added a Laguna air pump and I have plans to build an air driven filter at the lowest point and hooking the waterfall up to a skimmer. The pollen this year has been bad as always and the water has been a nice tea color for over a week.
I am changing roughly 75 gallon of water every other day using the pond water for the gardens. My wife loves lilies and are they too numerous to count. Very thirsty plants!
 
#16 ·
I am using this thread as a journal to watch the growth so I thought I would share and post some close ups. In the one picture is the spillway planted with golden creeping Jenny and locally collected rush. Also one of my canna lilies still potted, and a silver tipped azelea, and some locally collected sweet grass(I think). Just under the larger stone on the left I have planted lobelia cardinalis. The waterfall is temporary. My brother should be comin down from the poconos soon with some larger flat stones and I will build it a little larger.
The next picture shows two more of my canna lilies, the dark red I really like. Some obedient plant, locally collected pickerel rush and more unidentified rush. Also some dwarf papyrus.
The last pic shows a bog I made planted with anarchis and hornwort that the koi have a hard time getting to. A powerhead pushes water through the section on one side and it exists out the other. Some more collected pickerel rush and obedient plant.
 

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#17 ·
Water hyacinth and water lettuce are really sensitive to cold. Pretty much anything below 55 kills them. When we lived in CT, I would wait till June to put them in our pond and by July they would have multiplied to fill the pond.

What about a lotus for your koi?

Love the bridge!
 
#18 ·
Thanks. Temps have definitely been fluctuating so as your and others have said temps must have killed them.
I decided to redo the waterfall as it was boring me. I don't have the gph to do a huge falls and I don't really want too much noise so I did with the stone I had. I like the final falls but the surrounding rock still needs to be worked on to make look more natural.
 

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#19 ·
Small update.
After collecting more rock from the Delaware I was able to rebuild the waterfall to my liking. I changed out the utility style 1200 gph pump with a harbor freight 2100 gph pump with cage. Good deal with the 20% off coupon. I love that place. Under $100 with a 2yr no questions asked replacement warranty. Also added a few more plants, the row of petunias, not pictured is 3 stands of 4ft maiden grass(i think, not) at the edge of each gate to the deck. Each hanging planter got switched to New Guinea azelea and has creeping Jenny which should cascade over and tie into the rocks around the pond. The other grasses I collected arnt doing great and most have been pulled.
I added around 50 stems of parrots feather from a local lake which have been left alone so far by the koi, but I have extra in the stream if the do go at it.
Overall it's coming along great, growing in, and I think I am finally leak free. The stream was not much higher then the pond so getting it to work was a lot of fine tuning.
 

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