Specialty Gardening: By special request., 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
Go for it McG! Use silicon sealant to seal the plug in. I use square pond baskets, a curved one at the curved end, held up by bricks. You should sand the surface of the tub to give it a key so the paint sticks, we used black stone chip paint sprayed on, if you can't do that you could paint on matt black with a brush, this was already green enamel inside and we painted it but after a few years the paint peeled off, but green looks good. Water lilies like to be up to 2 feet deep, Irises closer to the surface.

Use a gritty soil, you can buy special soil for the purpose, don't use nitrogen fertilisers as this causes blanket weed, which I have had plenty of but I scoop it out by hand and some years you will find it doesn't grow much, last year it didn't, it was very hot so it possibly didn't like the heat. I emptied the whole thing out after about 5 years and repotted all the plants, the plants seemed to like it. Use pebbles on top of the baskets to hold in the soil, I have lots of them in the ground which I have kept, it looks nice if you put white ones on but they soon get covered with gunge so any will do. Other than that I usually get elbow deep in the spring when it starts to warm up to take out any leaves etc that have blown in it in the autumn, you cuold put a net over but I never do. Last year I had darters lay eggs in there so I'm not too keen to clear it out in case I scoop them out too. I had a fuchsia pot on one corner with a dead stem on it which I left as insurance against being blown off, the Darters liked to sit on it and I got pics of them, I found the female had been laying eggs when I looked at the pics, they are quite small really and pics make them bigger so you see more detail.