Carolyn22,
The picture of your pond and koi is beautiful. (July 4th @ 350pm) I would like to know how you can grow a lilly in the middle of the pond with such big koi? My koi are good size (18-24") and they trash any plant they can get a hold of. I have given up long ago trying to grow lillies in their space. I have tried to keep water lettuce floating in a mess bag but they push the mess in and up and manage to chew the lettuce's roots off! The are not underfed but are just big pigs I guess!! ^_^
Helen
Spring
Helen
we have not had problems with the hardy waterlilies, but have had many problems trying to grow tropical lilies. I have come to the conclusion the tropical waterlilies must taste better ^_^
My WL are planted in pea gravel and not in any of the clay planting mediums that are commonly used. We then put egg rock over the top of the pea gravel. Yes, we sometimes have pea gravel in the bottom of the pond, but not alot.
My understanding is when the koi are rooting around the pots of the WL, they are after the clay. We have only had one or two instances where a koi has taken a bite out of a lily pad, but they never went any further than the first bite. My koi are sizeable too - with most of them about 20ish inches and some are 25 inches, so they could decimate the waterlilies if they wanted.
I do have quite a bit of water celery growing in my bogs along side the pond. I know the koi just love the water celery and I do enjoy watching try to pull it out with all their might. Perhaps the water celery tastes better and I just got lucky. I don't know.
Carolyn
I tried the kitty litter thing this spring but after reading some of your earlier posts, I am going to pea gravel. I still had some plants to pot up and did it with gravel. I am hoping one of the local nurseries that has a shipment coming in of water plants has some celery that won't cost an arm and let. The other nursery charges $5 each for small and $15 each for big water lettuce. Jeeeez. And it doesn't last long here in our temp. The celery goes nuts. Some even survived last winter after I had thought we had gotten it all out of the rocks. good thing I guess, but I want more. It's pretty small right now.
mstella
,I planted celery last year and came back this year out of control!! I mean huge that it covered the waterfall. DH had to curt all of it but it is coming back. You buy the Italian celery at the nursery it is the same thing as a water celery.do not buy the pond plant.
Somehow my kois does not bother my plants. I guess they are very behaved.
My pond is 8 years and no baby kois yet. There was one year that we had babies but they ate them.
Bellie
Unfortunately it is too late. I put the water celery last year. I think that like many other plants that are severely invasive down south, upper US border, it gets tamed down here by the winter. I only have a couple of little sprouts that don't seem to be going anywhere---yet.
We have Water celery all over the place. It has jumped from one bog into another. It does add to the natural look of the pond though and what jumps out of the pond just gets mowed. I love the way it grows between the rocks.
We always ended up with a bunch of baby koi from the spawnings until last year when we first tried the bullfrog tads. We ran out of homes for the fry a long time ago, so the tads have been a real blessing. Each year, we would have to try to catch 50-60 fry and those little fry swim fast! It was such a chore to catch them all.
Couldn't you have waited until they got bigger. But then, they STILL swim awfully fast. Yes, the celery is coming up between the rocks. I just can't imagine how they survived unless the roots went wayyyyy down in the rock below the freeze/ice line.
Well, I got 2' of ice on the pond last year, and according to my engineer husband our frost goes down at least a foot or so. I honestly can't remember how deep here in Anchorage. I wonder if the water, which doesn't freeze at the bottom and stays above 32F might provide enough warmth to keep the lower roots alive.
Plus we deal with perma frost, frozen ground that never thaws out. That is more prevalent in the northern regions like Fairbanks and causes much damage when things are built on permafrost causing warming that thaws it. Home are destroyed as the ground thaws and the houses collapse. Doesn't happen so often any more as people generally don't build in those areas. Banks certainly wouldn't loan money to build anything there.
I don't know how far down our pond freezes, but I know it isn't anywhere as thick as yours. I would think our pond wouldn't freeze down more than several inches.
You have permafrost and we have the flood plains. Anybody that has lived in this area for any length of time knows where the flood plains are and that we generally flood twice a year. Others, do not and they tend to be the ones that get flooded....
My dear son bought a house in Fairbanks in the flood zone. Didn't know where it was til it was too late. That is, WE didn't know. We assumed he bought on the upper side of Rosey Creek out in the country, but he bought at the other end, one that ended way down by the Tanana river; it has flooded once in 20 years. He got flooded the next fall. A terrible disaster in many ways. Now they can't sell the house. flood insurance is over 3400 per year and no one will pay that even if they are willing to risk getting flooded.
Flood insurance is out of sight. Unfortunate for your son though.
Yup. They are having flood warnings right now. Lots of rain upriver. If it just stops raining for a few days it would make a big difference.
Send us the rain - can't keep things from wilting....
would if i could, but alas, i cant