Did anyone start any trees from seed this year?

Going back to your first pic, it looks like a sterile laboratory set up for genetic research! My seed flat area looks like a pig sty. How do you keep everything so neat? Maybe I need a maid . . .

Guy S.

Yes, the first photo looks sort of impressive I suppose... if I didn't add the photos of the "prep" area which had been formerly known as my kitchen. I suppose without those photos, the first photo would have looked good. I cleaned up the darn kitchen but now I want the maid because the whole rest of the house went down the tubes in the last few weeks while I was creating my "sterile laboratory set up".

Thanks so much Equil for the great links. I have bookmarked them and will do a lot of reading.

I'm interested in getting a windmill aereator for the pond. It is quite a ways from the house and electricity. Do you have an aereator in your pond? What fish did you choose to stock your pond with? I'd love to see pics of your pond.

Brenda

I use exclusively native fish and I'll go dig up a few pictures of some of my natural pond here in Illinois as well as the big momma up in Michigan and you will see why. They are larger like yours and lend themselves to going with natives. In the small decorative ponds that I have (preforms), I used Koi but I soon removed them as it isn't healthy to have 3 Koi in the sum total of 200 gallons of water. They need around 500 gallons a piece in my humble opinion. Basically, my pet koi needed space which I couldn't provide them so they went to a neighbor's pond that she had just built which was a couple thousand gallons. My little decorative ponds are no longer used for fish but for herps, odonata, and native aquatic carnivorous plants. I may or may not at some point in time consider a pond for Wakin but I've got way too much on my plate right now. I do have one preform pond that I toss rusty crayfish in for the raccoons to eat. I call that my raccoon pond. I'll dig up some photos for you and try to send them D-Mail. Most of my photos are in e-mails and I never have figured how to get them out of my e-mail client to be able to post here but anything taken on my digital camera that is in a program on the computer I can post.

Oops, the small ponds have biofilters and aerators. The larger natural ponds do not need them as they are self sustaining. I have no experience with windmill aerators. One thing, never toss a goldfish or a koi or any non native species into a natural body of anything. Non native aquatic plants, such as water hyacinth, should never be tossed in to a natural body of water either but bagged and tossed out with your garbage. If one ever ends up with too many fry, please give them to a pet shop or something but never let them go in a stream or pond or lake or anything.

Brenda, you have D-Mail.