The little water garden

I want water lilies for, um... reasons (it may have to do with youtube, or possibly somewhere fun to have my morning coffee)  

This corner of the garden is safe from chickens and ducks but has terrible soil.  I haven't time to improve the soil this year, so I am putting the water garden there.  

Step one: remove the worst of the weeds.  I'm removing weeds that are spreading (grass) and ones that I don't have a good affinity with (taking out the wild geranium and healall because they are mean to my skin, but keeping the chickweed and other tasty treats)

I think the biggest challenge is that I know nothing about water lilies.  

I watched some youtube videos, and I learned
- there are A LOT of different plants we call lilies
- there are more than one kind of lily that grows in water
- what I think of as water lilies with the lily pad and lotus shape flower, come in a lot of different sizes and needs.  

So I went to the nursery where they usually sell these, and they were really busy, come back next week or the week after.  But I did manage to get one answer out of them.  The water wants to be at least two feet deep - and deeper if I want to overwinter.

Our main pond is several dozen feet deep, so I figure I can toss them in the big pond in the fall and if they survive, woot!  Maybe.  Not sure yet.  There might be a better way.  


Does anyone know, do lilies need standing water or moving water?  I got a solar fountain that should work well for moving water around.  

(ps, the ladder is for beans to grow on.  It's actually two dead ladders I tied together with string and hope. )

No photos for this update as nothing major has changed.

Whenever I disturb the soil, it gives the chance for weeds to grow.  I like to choose my own weeds, so I scattered some harty vegi seeds, mostly kale and chard, on the area that will be dug.  Even if they don't germinate this year, they will stay in the soil as part of the soil seedbank.  I find kale is especially good for this as it can hibernate for years while waiting for the right conditions (rather like a weed).  Although I was sad we don't have any minor's lettuce seed.

I found some clover seed, mostly crimson, which I'm excited to scatter around once the pond is in place.  Hoping it's not too late in the season for it to grow.

In other news, I've decided on the container.  It's 35"x19" and 14" deep.  It could go up to 20" deep but there are holes where the hand holds are so I would need to find some way to plug them.  Not as deep as I would like, but I think it will do for this first year to see if I like it.  

Another option would be to get clay and dig my own hole, use the clay to make the water stay in.  But clay is hard to get on the island and is rather expensive to get trucked in.  Much easier to keep an eye out for a better container for next year.

The next task, dig a hole for my new water garden.  

Water lilies (nymphaeas) prefer still water.

There are some miniature species that require very shallow water. The ones I know are all very frost-hardy.
I have a white one (don't remember the variety) in my little garden pond that has about 1,30 meters of depth and where the flowers stay open all day - there are some varieties that only open in the morning which is not compatible with people working in offices ;-)

Then I have a dwarf waterlily in my tiny bucket pond which has not emerged yet. I hope it survived the winter well.

That's good to know.

Question: most water plants want some sort of soil, so how do we stop that soil from fermenting and getting smelly with the organic matter in it, if it's stagnate?  

r ranson wrote:That's good to know.

Question: most water plants want some sort of soil, so how do we stop that soil from fermenting and getting smelly with the organic matter in it, if it's stagnate?  

Plants and (tiny) aquatic insects make the diference between a stinky muddy puddle and a living pond.
Add more plants, both floating and submerged - check which plants are native / appropiate for your climate. Inoculate your little pond with a bucket of water from a living, thriving pond nearby.

As to soil, it is a good idea to cover the (submerged) pots with a layer of washed gravel.
You could get a little dynamic into the water by choosing a form that is not perfectly circular but rather bean (or kidney) shaped. I have read that tip in several publications but haven't done my own research. Although still stagnate, the water swirls a little bit more (by windflow).

r ranson wrote:Question: most water plants want some sort of soil, so how do we stop that soil from fermenting and getting smelly with the organic matter in it, if it's stagnate?  

I don't know about water plants wanting some sort of soil.

I have been experimenting with growing plants in just water.

I have had six spider plants living in glasses of water in my laundry room since February:

https://permies.com/t/210600/Talking-growing-house-plants-water

I also feel aquaponic folks will agree that plants don't need soil.

I've discovered the biggest problem with putting this pond in the full sun.  The sun!  It is hot.  

Digging in the sun is not fun, so I've been mostly working on this at night.  But the night is dark.  sigh.  There's no way to win working in the summer.  

But the grunt work is done.  I dug a hole deeper than I needed, then filled it in to get it level so the bin can fit sit comfortably in the hole.  The more I see it, the more I'm regretting the ugly blue tub.  But maybe once it's finished, it will look like tropical blue water?  

At nearly three feet down, the soil is bone dry.  It's only been two weeks since the last rain (and five months until I can expect the next one).  We've done a lot of work building the soil here, but given how good the drainage is on glacial till, we changed tacts and focused our attention on more concentrated areas to build soil faster.  

The next step, fill in the sides of the tub, fill it with water and test the tub and the pump to make sure everything's working.  By then, the nursery should have water plants in stock.  

here we are checking to see if the bin will hold water and if the solar fountain I got works.

The fountain works wonderfully well in the full sun.  But just half a pannel in the shade and the whole thing turns off.  Good to know.  

As for the bin, I HATE IT.

It's not going to do the trick at all.  The big reason for this project is for a photoshoot this summer and the blue plastic will look ugly and cast colour on the subject and anything near the blue plastic.

Time for a rethink.    

Goals:
- water lily that looks good for a photoshoot
- learn what is required to care for a water feature
- decide if I want one next year and what changes I might make


Restrictions:
- cost as little as possible
- be big enough to get a feel for it
- be small enough to fit in the current space I have for it
- not create too many mosquitoes
- be protected from monsters like rats, birds, and raccoons.  

Going to see what I can improvize.  

I was thinking a splash pool (but they are only 10-12" deep) or burry a bathtub (but there aren't any free ones online right now).  No free boats either.  There's bound to be something come up.  

Here in Germany I can get small pieces of (synthetic) pond liner for about 20-25 dollar (natural rubber would be more expensive).

I made a shallow pond, hiding the edges with stones. A natural film soon covers most of the foil.
You could do the same but with steeper walls. (For reference: The little pond is much smaller than the tub you used. In March I even had several male frogs chanting in there but no females, alas).

I am adding pictures of my little pond which even attracted breeding damselflies and allowed me to grow tadpoles that we had rescued from a drying puddle.
The other picture shows a tiny pond of a lady who is breeding endangered amphibians (with permission of the authorities).
Here in our climate we do not need sprinklers.

ah, pond liner.  It's in the name.

We use rubber pond liner a lot on the farm.  It's great for keeping water and light off the hay, a non-slip flooring when transporting animals, and super-heated weed destruction.   The funny thing is, I didn't think about using it for lining the pond.  

I wonder if we have any pieces large enough.  If not, can it be overlapped or would the water seep out?  

r ranson wrote:the blue plastic will look ugly

you can drape stuff in and over it like burlap, wet leaves, brown tarps, etc, maybe even temporarily. little ponds and swamps are so cool and useful during rainless times.

I've been massively impressed by how much moisture is absorbing in the soil near the fountain.  There's very little splash, but it's created a microclimate that cools the soil faster in the evening and seems to encourage dew to settle on that part of the garden.  

In other news, I've been wondering if fish would make halfway decent mosquito control.

I asked at a few places.  The nursery says I should invest a few hundred dollars and get two koi from them.  I don't need anything special to keep them healthy and a bunch of other stuff that contradicts the book I got out from the library on keeping koi.

At the pet store, they asked more questions about my setup and said that I would need to make some adjustments to the design and don't buy koi.  By the goldfish, 3 for a dollar.  They are small but their needs are less fussy and although they would benefit from water fountains, so long as there are enough healthy plants, the water should have enough oxygen.  And some words about how to check if the fish are happy.    They are also sort-of related to koi, but probably won't live very long.  I can return the fish to the store at the end of the summer if I want - no money to me, but they will do a health check and sell them on to a good home.  

Goldfish need a lot of water to themselves. I think it's ten gallons per fish or something like that.  From your set up, it looks like your pond will have quite a bit of surface area and some agitation from the fountain, so the goldfish should be fine in there, oxygenwise, even without plants. I wonder about the temperature, though.  Might get too hot for them.

The original size with the blue bucket is about 40 gallons.  The person at the pet store said I could get 5 small goldfish (3 for a dollar ones) or 3 larger ones (about a dollar each).  If burried in the ground, it should be cool enough, but temperature was something to watch out for.  The lily pads should provide enough shade as our summers average about 20+C (70F) during the day and in the low teens at night... on a normal year.  

If I dig a bigger pond, then I can have some area shaded and some area in the full sun for the fountain to work.  

Did some more digging, leaving the blue tank in place until I use up the water in the garden.

Found a rock.
It's heavier than it looks.

r ranson wrote:We use rubber pond liner a lot on the farm. ....
I wonder if we have any pieces large enough.  If not, can it be overlapped or would the water seep out?  

I had good success with mending large holes in my butyl rubber pond liner for my polytunnel pond. The sheet had developed several mouse nibbled holes during storage:

source

This was done about 5 years ago, and I have had no problems with leaks. I'm sure the same method could be used to join two bits of rubber.
You will need a good amount of rubber adhesive (like tyre puncture repair kits). I treated it like a huge puncture repair - keyed the surfaces, covered both bits of rubber with the glue, left it to go tacky then carefully brought them together and rubbed the join well to make sure there were no leak paths. It would be tricky to redo, so you have to get it right first time.

There are a few advantages to the butyl rubber (which I am sure is discussed elsewhere) such as flexibility in shape and size of pond, more natural looking colour - the dark just looks like deep water as long as the rubber above the water level is hidden under rocks or earth. To improve durability, you might want to line underneath the pond liner with an old blanket or carpet to protect it from sharp rocks in your soil. If it just for one summer that wouldn't be so critical I suppose.


(edited to add picture source - more info on pond construction is on my blog if interested)

r ranson wrote:In other news, I've been wondering if fish would make halfway decent mosquito control.  

I believe we had a discussion on mosquitos in the natural pond thread.

In any case, if it were my climate and a pond for wildlife I would definitely not add fish - they add nutrients (via their poop) and eat native wildlife (dragonfly larvae, amphibians etc.)
As soon as you add plants, different insects will arrive that feed on mosquito larvae and adults. In the little pond-liner pond I showed above there are zero mosquitoes hatching.

As your pond serves another purpose you might opt for a different setup.
But from my experience there are no problems as long as the water garden mimics a natural body of water.

About overwintering waterlilies, I think I read that you can pull them up and store them in a cool place like a root cellar.

It turns out we had a pond liner big enough after all.  This is good news because the project would have been scuppered given the current prices of pond liners.  

I smoothed out the hole the best I could and filled it up, stopping every foot or so to adjust the liner.  This is only temporary so I've folded over the edges of the liner instead of cutting it off.  I'm going for rocks for the edge.  We have enough of them around the farm and the tractor can just plant them outside the garden and I'll move them in during spare moments.  

I'm chuffed.
Next step, plants.  lots and lots of plants.  

Mostly I've been gathering rocks for the edging.  I wish I had made a bit more of a ledge for the rocks to sit on.  But it's looking pretty good.  I haven't filled the pond all the way up yet, to make it easier to place the rocks.

I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying this.  Both the process and the results.  I find I'm often watching the small songbirds enjoying the pond too.  Today there was an American goldfinch having a bath in the shallow end, and earlier, I drank my coffee to a little sparrow singing on the rocks.  

I think it's ready for some pond plants.  The fish store has plants, but they want warmer water. And are really expensive.  All water plants are pricy, so I might have to see if I can find some duckweed from a wild source - it's invasive here, so I'm confident I can find someone who will let me harvest it.

I'm in love with how your project grew.
You started the same way I'm thinking about adding a small pool - an old plastic tote. You had the idea of a nice place for a water lily and a cup of morning drink, and it grew ....

I now know that my preliminary idea of a baby pool/splash pool wouldn't work - for the same reasons. I have a high clay content in my soil, so I should be able to dig down a distance and space, plus a little, and the clay *should* fill any seep spots for me over time.
Yeah, it's getting too hot to do much digging, but if I repurpose a damp place in the yard that already has a tendency for wet, I can work on it in bits and pieces as I have time, energy, and inclination. I can think of lots of places to put the dirt I dig out, too - quite a few spots that need filled in or leveled.

Your little water garden project has inspired me to see what I can do. It'll be good for me, my local amphibians will appreciate it, and the geese will have fun.
Now I just need to -ahem- dive in to the project.
Thank you for the beautiful pictures. It's a lovely little water garden and I look forward to seeing it when you decide it's finished. The fountains and decorations are fabulous!

There is quite a lot of evaporation,  especially on humid nights.   It's consistent depending on surface area of the water,  so I think a leak is unlikely.   I was careful to check for sharp stones and this liner can withstand sheep hoves, so I can't see it tearing for dull rocks.

thinking more about evaporation and the water surface.  It should lessen once the plants are established so I don't need to worry too much about it just yet.

now to find some duckweed locally.  

With this much evaporation, if I get fish, I'm going to have to think about how to add water to the pond.  I'm on a well so we filter the water with a few systems but don't use any chemicals to clean it.  So I don't need to worry about the same issues we would get with city water.  

Would I still need to let the water stand?  

There's the temperature difference between the well water and the pond, but it's large enough that topping it up with a hose doesn't make any noticeable difference.  My thermometer measures to 1/10 degree C, and it doesn't register the change.  

r ranson wrote:In other news, I've been wondering if fish would make halfway decent mosquito control... By the goldfish, 3 for a dollar...  They are also sort-of related to koi, but probably won't live very long.  

I wouldn't be too sure about the short lifespan of goldfish. My kid recently had their goldfish, Sid Fishus, pass away after 11 years! He grew to be huge, relatively speaking. I think he was about 7 inches long. Pretty amazing for a carnival fish carried home in a plastic baggie.
If you could bring in your fish to an aquarium for the winter, who knows how long they may grace your pond?

it looks better with plants.

The water lilies are EXPENSIVE!  I had hoped to get four, but I could only afford 2.  But I got two others that are supposed to be good at making oxygen under water.  I also got some floating lettuce and tried to capture as much free duckweed in the self-serve water plant section as I could.  The duckweed disappeared in a couple of days.  

But I do have some mystery creature leaving bits of leaf and sprigs of oregano in my water when I'm not looking.  

I think it needs more plants

I'm enjoying watching your progress with this beautiful, 'becoming' pond/water garden, r!! I think it will be a peaceful place to recharge!

I'm going to start this update by saying it's getting murky in there.  Not sure what to do about it.  Some of it's the plants and dust getting in the water, I'm sure.  Maybe some of it is algae?  We get this pink stuff that grows in standing water.  I suspect a lof of it is the massive amount of bird poo that they use to pay for the drinks and the bath.  

I took the flag iris out because I wonder if garden soil would just ferment instead of helping the plant grow.  

I added some more decorations.  A broken teapot that I couldn't throw away.  The edges are sanded down so it won't break the liner or hurt the fish.  

Yes, I got some fish.  The store only had comets which are goldfish-shaped goldfish.  Very cute.  splurged and got two, 70 cent ones because the 30 cent tank has a lot of upside-down fish.  We've had them a few days now and they are active in the afternoon but I don't think they know what fish flakes are for.  They only eat them when they fall to the bottom about 20 min after feeding, but the instructions to feed them only what they eat in 2 min, so I don't really know if I'm feeding enough.  I'm erring on the side of not feeding them much and that might be why my duckweed vanished.  

A bit disappointed by the lack of the fish interacting when I feed them, but when I was installing the second fountain, the fish kept hammering against my hand when it was in the water.  It was a very weird experience.  Not entirely pleasant, but at least there is some interaction.  

I keep thinking about making a new and better pond closer to where I relax in the garden next year.  I wonder if a more powerful pump would be a way to filter the water by pouring it through a filter bed before it cascades into the pond would keep the water more balanced.  I don't know.  I would have to learn more.

It's been almost two weeks with this pond.  No sign of a mosquito lave yet.  They are other places.  

Also, choosing a black gold fish for a black lining was either a really silly idea because I can't see it or a really great idea to improve his/her/it's chances of survival.  

The evaporation yesterday was scary.  The air is dry, it was hot-ish, windy, and in full sun.  I removed one of the fountains but still...

Normal evaporation on a hot day is about an inch.  Yesterday was two and a bit inches.  

I'm almost feeling like there's something more going on.  

If your water's getting murky after putting fish in, it might just be the fish. They're pretty dirty. Putting some gravel at the bottom of the pond will help. You need the biological filter that grows in the gravel to keep the nitrates from the fish balanced. It takes a while for your system to balance out after putting fish in, which is why, in aquariums, you have to do frequent partial water changes for the first little bit. More plants help, too, but goldfish eat everything.

As someone who has too many goldfish in their life, for assorted reasons, I can agree with the statement - goldfish are messy.
They are like the geese of the fish world - very pooptastic. It almost seems as though they have too much poop for their tiny selves to reasonably contain. As long as they are pooping, they have enough to eat and you're fine.

Goldfish will try to eat everything. They don't do as well with floating flake food, but will eat the heck out of pellets. Depending on how small your fish are, you can even feed them cat and/or dog food - the corn based stuff is slightly better for them, but the pellets made with fish meal are great (though they stink). The great thing about the pellets is that they will sink and get eaten quickly. Yours are currently busy eating the duckweed and any insects they can find. They will then start on the rest of your plants, then the algae, then each other. It's a hierarchy.
Giving them vegetation can keep them entertained. You can give them soggy lettuce or soft spinach and they will be your friend. I fed mine anything that looked vaguely nutritious and green - grass clippings, spinach, clover, etc -  along with their pellets.

Goldfish are seen as being "throw-away" fish by most people. Kinda like pet rodents and chickens as livestock. You can keep certain goldfish alive for years (my oldest one was 3), and they will grow the entire time, but only to the limits of their environment. (Unlike alligators which grow just because they do. Who's going to tell an alligator to stay small?)  Rule of thumb is 10 gallons per inch of goldfish is you want the water to stay reasonably clear.

Yes. If there's a way you can filter the water, please do so. It will be great for watering plants later, but filtering it through anything will make it that much safer and more likely you'll enjoy your little water garden. I ended up with three goldfish in a 20gal tank. Because I was in Texas at the time, I ran tubing through a slightly modified "personal" refrigerator and had their aerator pump into that, with the water returning to the tank filtered and cooled (they don't do well above 80F or 26C).

There are formula you can use to figure how much evaporation you *should* be getting from your pond, and that way you can keep tabs on if there's something going on. If you have visitors who are dunking into the water, there will be some displacement and they might be taking water away in their feathers.  According to some really quick research, the standard rate of evaporation is assumed to be .25 inch per day or ~.5cm. If you're getting more than that, and not having any conditions that might explain it otherwise (water evaporation gets really complicated really fast), you might want to see if there's a way to add back that amount of loss while you search for a reason. It makes sense that the ground around your pool will be soaking up water, but that will start to drop off as the ground becomes saturated. Keep measuring the rate of water loss and just check to see if you can find a reason. I wouldn't assume a leak - the oregano and green bits imply someone's messing about in your garden - but that might be easily explained.

Best of luck! Luck to the fish, too!

more on the "evaporation" later (and yes, it now has quotes around it).  First, to catch up on the story.


Evaporation in my mind means that there aren't enough plants to keep the water shaded.  Or it's an excuse to buy more plants.  Or the shop had some on sale.  Anyway, more plants happened.  

I got a multi-plant pot for the shallow end and some more floating lettuce so that I could get more duckweed in hopes of propagating it in another pot.  To that end, I set up a small plant station in an old livestock waterer in the hopes of making more water plants and duckweed for my fish to eat.  

I'm sad.  

Yesterday was an extremely busy day.  On top of it, it was an extremely bad pain day and if it wasn't so busy I would have spent it sitting by the pond or sitting in the hospital ER feeling sorry for myself.

I top up the pond every evening and check on it in the morning.  The usual loss is half to one inch overnight and about the same (or less) during the day.  Weird it has so much loss at night, but I guess that's ponds for you.

It was down about four inches and continued to go down at an increasingly fast rate as the morning progressed.  So I scooped out the two fish and put them in my plant nursery (maybe duckweed will grow away from the fish) pond.  Those things are hard to catch so I'm very glad I invested in a net.  I got most of the plants out but the lilies and then continued on my day.  When I got home, it looked like the water level had stabilized at just under two feet deep.  Or, to put it another way, at about the bottom of where that bowl where I have the frog fountain touches the lining.

My theory: perhaps the weight of the bowl and the new plants that I put next to it expanded a weakness in the lining.  Tomorrow, I shall fill it up a bit above the suspected hole and then use a dropper to put some milk near the edge and observe where it flows.  Then I can learn to patch a pond liner.  This is going to be a great skill to have (although, I've only got a tyre repair kit, so it may not be a great patch job)

That was yesterday

New water features take time to settle in.
When setting up any fish habitat, it's standard practice to let the container/water feature do it's thing without plant or animal life for a week before adding plants. Wait another week, then add animals/insects. Unfortunately, this seems to have snuck up on you.

I hope you are able to find the weak area. It's a shame that it's taking so much pleasure out of these early days, but you can look forward to the future and know that you have faced all the potential problems head on, and arrived at reasonable solutions. This is the hard part. I'm sorry it's being so frustrating.

I hope tomorrow is a better day, all around.

This morning

72 hours from full to this.  

My secondary puddle for attempting to make more plants.

Now the temporary house for my fish so I made a tertiary home for plants that couldn't fit in there so the fish at least have some room to move.   It's about 50 gallons, so, minus space for the things the fish can hide under and the plants, they probably have 35 gallons to swim in.  Hoping that's enough for two small goldfish for a few days.  Although it might be longer.  

Having so much less water than the bigger pond I was working on, there is more temperature variation during the day so I'll get some gravel from the other one and put it in the bottom of this to make it absorb less heat.  It's in dappled shade most of the day with full shade for an hour or two around noon.  

Then again, the fish seem far more active when the water is warmer.

I am disappointed.
But I'm also not surprised.

The pond liner is old and we've used it for many jobs on the farm.  I expected it not to work at all and that it worked this well has whet my appetite for a permanent water garden.  I was already starting the planning by getting a stack of books from the library on small ponds, water features, and water gardens.  The temporary water garden is awesome, but it's also not as tidy as I would like.  It would do as it is for my photography needs, but...


At this stage, I need to do some decision-making.  Do I have the energy (and resources) to make a more permanent water garden or do I want to go in a different direction like getting a new pond liner and using this old one as a cushion to protect it from the ground?  There are a lot of options.