Water Gardening: storing floating hyacinths in winter, 1 by Carolyn22

Carolyn22 wrote:
Actually, the stone fence idea works quite well and accomplishes several things --

When we enlarged our pond a couple of years ago, my DH had the idea of using the shelf area as a giant bog. He put in the stone fencing using the pond foams that are curently available, We then filled the entire area with pea gravel. The pea gravel works well as a bog area with different plants and it also helps as an area to filter the water. You can see part of the stone fence in my picture.

We found that by putting the water hyacinths in the bog area, that we don't have the problems with the koi beating up the water hyacinths, nor do the water hyacinths end up getting caught up in the current to the skimmer. When planting the water hyacinths in the pea gravel, they are able to get enough nutrition to flower. We have had as many as 7 or 8 blooms at once on the water hyacinths.

We buy a couple of water hyacinths each year. We had tried to carry them over and it really was more hassel than anything else - (our lives tend to be rather frenetic at times). When we buy our water hyacinths each year, we also pick up a couple of the water lettuce so the koi can have fun with those. The water lettuce typically does not last very long with the koi.

Carolyn