Pond Blogging, Pt 1.
When I haven't been at work -- which is most of the time, busy as we are -- the last couple of weekends have been spent rehabbing our backyard pond.
It came with the house, full of beautiful goldfish. Way too many goldfish. They are illegal to release into the waterways, and attempts to give them away met with no takers. Last winter, with the very long, very cold snap, I was unable to keep a hole open in the pond for gas exchange. When spring arrived, there were 70 little fish corpses floating in the water. Now they fertilize our garden.
Also, over three years of kids playing around it and three years of freeze-thaw cycles, much of the surrounding rocks had ended up in the bottom of the pond. The tall grasses had gone nuts, taking over the entire back end and the lillies, pictured below in 2005 had also become overgrown. So, time to empty it out and start from scratch.
Step one is to pump out the thing and remove all the debris from the bottom. The pond is about 4.5 feet deep in the middle. Emptying the first 3.5 feet was pretty easy with the pump. But then the lilies and the accumulated pine needles got in the way. So, first step was to divide the lilies.
Water lilies are very easy to divide. They are rhizomes or bulbs. So, I simply found the most healthy looking of the six and eight foot lengths of bulb and cut off all the current growth (which was pretty extensive by late May) and laid the bare bulbs with just a few nubs in a wading pool. I discarded everything else. Below, you can see me left in ankle-deep water consisting of mud, grass clippings, pine needles and other organic matter (use your imagination). The discarded lilies and stuff can be seen in the upper pool. You can also see where many rocks have fallen in and how the grasses are overgrown.
I'm trying to hook up the pump to get the rest of the water out. I got out all but about three or four inches. This was mostly mud and gravel and I hauled that out four or five trips with a five gallon bucket.
As I was getting down to the final few inches of muck, I saw movement in the water. At first I thought it was a frog. But what I could see breaking the top of the water was long and white-yellow. Reaching down I saw... a goldfish!! Somehow, this guy had survived the oxygen deprived winter, and lived in the turbulent, gross water for two days. He was immediately deposited into a clean container. We dubbed him Creature From the Black Lagoon. He/she is an Übergoldfish. We will get three or four new goldfish and he/she will sire/spawn a new Master Race of goldfish! Mwahahaha!
Time to scrub the liner down (soap and water) and let it dry. Next I hit the grasses with Roundup, covering the clusters I wanted to keep. I waited about three days for the poison to work its way down to the roots then attacked with the weed whacker, knocking them down to about 1-2 inch stems then hitting again with the Roundup. Eventually, I'll have to go to work with the shovel and dig up as much of the root mass as possible. We will then lay down plastic plant barriers and put some nice paving stones and river rock on top for a Japanese garden feel in the area by the large boulders. Some potted plants will go nicely there too.
I also had to take out all the rocks and spray them down thoroughly to remove old dirt and whatnot. To do it properly, I should have treated them with some sort of masonry cleaner, but I was on a budget.
Next, time to begin repairing the rim and the rock shelves. The stuff to use is polyurethane expanding foam, just like using in home insulation and filling in gaps. Real pond professionals use a version that is black-colored to match the pond liner. However, this stuff costs about $13 a can and is unavailable anywhere locally. Mail order would have cost about $70 for two cans with shipping. So, I ran down to Farm and Fleet and got the beige stuff. It dries to a dark beige color that is very close to the natural sandstone. It is tricky stuff to work with though and I'm not sure I'm totally happy with the aesthetics of the results. Practically speaking though it works like a charm and makes a very solid bond between the rocks and the liner. Below are the early results with the shelves done and the grasses knocked back.
It's been raining on and off pretty hard all the last two weeks, so the pond has filled back up with rainwater. But this morning I also got the waterfall built with nice, flat stones we brought back from the Indiana Dunes and put the newly potted lilies back in the main pool.
So, that's what I've been doing with my precious little spare time. Once the pond is full back up, I'll start working on the upper pool rock rim and waterfall, a cute housing for the filter, and putting back the bridge that existed when we bought the house.
It came with the house, full of beautiful goldfish. Way too many goldfish. They are illegal to release into the waterways, and attempts to give them away met with no takers. Last winter, with the very long, very cold snap, I was unable to keep a hole open in the pond for gas exchange. When spring arrived, there were 70 little fish corpses floating in the water. Now they fertilize our garden.
Also, over three years of kids playing around it and three years of freeze-thaw cycles, much of the surrounding rocks had ended up in the bottom of the pond. The tall grasses had gone nuts, taking over the entire back end and the lillies, pictured below in 2005 had also become overgrown. So, time to empty it out and start from scratch.
Step one is to pump out the thing and remove all the debris from the bottom. The pond is about 4.5 feet deep in the middle. Emptying the first 3.5 feet was pretty easy with the pump. But then the lilies and the accumulated pine needles got in the way. So, first step was to divide the lilies.
Water lilies are very easy to divide. They are rhizomes or bulbs. So, I simply found the most healthy looking of the six and eight foot lengths of bulb and cut off all the current growth (which was pretty extensive by late May) and laid the bare bulbs with just a few nubs in a wading pool. I discarded everything else. Below, you can see me left in ankle-deep water consisting of mud, grass clippings, pine needles and other organic matter (use your imagination). The discarded lilies and stuff can be seen in the upper pool. You can also see where many rocks have fallen in and how the grasses are overgrown.
I'm trying to hook up the pump to get the rest of the water out. I got out all but about three or four inches. This was mostly mud and gravel and I hauled that out four or five trips with a five gallon bucket.
As I was getting down to the final few inches of muck, I saw movement in the water. At first I thought it was a frog. But what I could see breaking the top of the water was long and white-yellow. Reaching down I saw... a goldfish!! Somehow, this guy had survived the oxygen deprived winter, and lived in the turbulent, gross water for two days. He was immediately deposited into a clean container. We dubbed him Creature From the Black Lagoon. He/she is an Übergoldfish. We will get three or four new goldfish and he/she will sire/spawn a new Master Race of goldfish! Mwahahaha!
Time to scrub the liner down (soap and water) and let it dry. Next I hit the grasses with Roundup, covering the clusters I wanted to keep. I waited about three days for the poison to work its way down to the roots then attacked with the weed whacker, knocking them down to about 1-2 inch stems then hitting again with the Roundup. Eventually, I'll have to go to work with the shovel and dig up as much of the root mass as possible. We will then lay down plastic plant barriers and put some nice paving stones and river rock on top for a Japanese garden feel in the area by the large boulders. Some potted plants will go nicely there too.
I also had to take out all the rocks and spray them down thoroughly to remove old dirt and whatnot. To do it properly, I should have treated them with some sort of masonry cleaner, but I was on a budget.
Next, time to begin repairing the rim and the rock shelves. The stuff to use is polyurethane expanding foam, just like using in home insulation and filling in gaps. Real pond professionals use a version that is black-colored to match the pond liner. However, this stuff costs about $13 a can and is unavailable anywhere locally. Mail order would have cost about $70 for two cans with shipping. So, I ran down to Farm and Fleet and got the beige stuff. It dries to a dark beige color that is very close to the natural sandstone. It is tricky stuff to work with though and I'm not sure I'm totally happy with the aesthetics of the results. Practically speaking though it works like a charm and makes a very solid bond between the rocks and the liner. Below are the early results with the shelves done and the grasses knocked back.
It's been raining on and off pretty hard all the last two weeks, so the pond has filled back up with rainwater. But this morning I also got the waterfall built with nice, flat stones we brought back from the Indiana Dunes and put the newly potted lilies back in the main pool.
So, that's what I've been doing with my precious little spare time. Once the pond is full back up, I'll start working on the upper pool rock rim and waterfall, a cute housing for the filter, and putting back the bridge that existed when we bought the house.
posted by -cman- at 6/03/2007 12:36:00 PM
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