Can these be just thrown into the water or must they be rooted in something?
fred
water hyanciths
They're floaters so they like to be free to just sit in the water but can and will root in pots.
OK ,good. I have these shallow 10" to 12" subpools and wish to green them up and let the water flow through them. I just bid on 4 hyacinths on ebay. I guess they'll muliply? How?
Same question with Blue Pickerel. The net tells me that they need from 0 to 12 inches of water but not how to grow them. I can only presume that they want a pot as plain concrete is not their natural home. :-) For now I stuck it into my filter material in the bio.
The pickerel is called a marginal. They do like to be rooted in soil and the depth they gave is good. If the plant is very small I'd stay with the 0 to 1".
fredrump, your WHs will form floating islands. The plants float because they have sort of "airbags" around the roots. When the clumps get big, they split off---or you can split them manually and they will do fine. When they get really crowded is when they bloom----if they're not crowded, they just keep multiplying. I force mine to bloom by confining the colony in a floating Hula-Hoop. In the heat of summer, I let them form bigger clumps to help shade the fish. My koi like to nibble the roots, which also helps to keep them from taking over. When they do get out of hand, I thin them out and compost them. They make great compost!
If the pickerel is to remain in you bio filter don't pot it, it defeats the purpose.
I'm not sure if skimmers are common here but I have one and the idea is to suck floating debrit into the skimmer. Won't all floating plants naturally want to go into the skimmer or at least congregate in front of it? I mean the hulahoop is a great idea but I'd have to anchor the thing somehow, right? The same with other free floaters.
For now I think I'll only have anacharis and waterlilies in my main pond along with one umbrella plant which I know from experience will get rather large in a big pot. I have these things growing wild in my low mucky ground which I call my very own jungle in the Everglades. Giant elephant leaves grow there along with bananas none of which I put there. It's all under the cypress trees.
I have a skimmer, made from a plastic planter with a slightly raised lip, and the floaters do congregate around the edge---another reason for the hula hoop. The shape of the lip on the skimmer and the size of the WHs usually keeps them from getting sucked in---and if they do, they just float in there----they don't get sucked into the pipe. Of course, that might vary with the size of your pump, etc.
I've used tubing as a hula hoop for my hyacinths before and I would have to anchor it in some or the whole thing would block the skimmer, some sort of string wrapped around a rock or something at the edge does the trick.
Oh yeah---I forgot I did that, too!~ We tied fishing line around a rock and put it in the bottom of the pond to anchor the hoop. Used the large black drip tubing when the old hula hoop bit the dust, and it worked better. Thanks for reminding me of something ELSE that needs to go on my to-do list when it warms up!!
LOL
Hey - was just lurking and THANKS for the super idea about the hula hoop! And I didn't know they needed to be crowded to bloom - I just added hula hoops to my to-do list, too! Dax
Fread the water hyanciths are used as filters they will help keep your pools clean if you dont win the ones on ebay take a ride and you can get your own in any ditch or pond in florida. dont let yours get a3way or get in any water ways tho as they cauces lots of trouble in florida in the rivers and lakes Paul
You mean no body cares if you get plants out of the waterways? My mom and brother are currently in Florida, hmmm wonder if they can bring me home some hyanciths? Where would they look?
Keep in mind that if you have them here in TX they HAVE to be controlled. They are beautiful but dangerous to our waterways here because they multiple so fast.
I had problems last year with the "hair" from the roots shedding and clogging my pumps. Any ideas to prevent this?
Jason B Bour
bestinbreed.org
It's the fish digging at the roots that usually cause damage to the hyacinth roots. You can use landscape tubing and a landscape cloth of some sort sewn around it to make an island that will protect the roots. I did that last year and it worked great until they climbed right out of it LOL They reproduce so quickly I've finally decided they're more work than they're worth and vow not to grow them anymore.....we'll see how long that last!
I may put them up in the upper pond then, and see how that goes.
They are wonderful in the biofalls for filtration, but won't stay contained for long. I had to keep pulling out and composting a lot of them. The Koi do love to nibble at the roots for sure.
I just love the water hyacinths. The blooms are very nice. Reminds me of the eye of a peacock feather. I have them every year and end up composting a lot of them because they multiply so rapidly. The goldfish like to lay their eggs in the roots and I see a lot of frogs and the occasional newt among the roots and leaves. No danger of them getting out of control here as they freeze and die during the long cold winters that we have.
I'm with you tetleytuna, here in 5a, I just compost them come Fall and start over each year. I always just buy 3, and by the end of summer they have grown nicely to provide the fish with shade. I've had some trouble with them going into the skimmer, so I'm going to use hula hoops next year to keep them in place - we'll see how that works. Here they are in August - Dax
Nice looking pond dax!
Yes Dax it is. What kind of rock is the WF made with?
I wish I took more time building mine, but I did it by myself before I found Dave Garden, and dug by hand.
Thanks - well, goldeneagleone, it's interesting that you ask since it's a combination of odds and ends. The falls from the stream above is a slab of granite that a local company gave me as a left over from a job they had. I found that they give those pieces away since there's not much they can do with them. It's right on the liner, and I sealed it behind the slab. The front of the falls is actually molded cement pieces, made to look like stone. I needed flat backs so they could be stacked without getting in the way of the water. I got them at Menard's. I used them to line the entire pond because they lay flat, and don't leech into the water. At first they looked really fake, but over the summer, the water aged them very nicely. The top edging is limestone which we have alot of around here, but if you look close, none of the real limestone is actually in the water. I learned here not to put limestone into the pond itself. So, it's pretty do it yourself. I know what you mean about time, though. This was done the second year. The first year I just had the liner showing and didn't get any of the finishing look work done. Dax