Archive for September, 2010

How To Take Care Of Your Fish Pond

Do you like the sound of running water? Do you find the sound relaxing? Well, you can easily create the sound of moving water in your own garden. You can put in a fish pond or a water garden. So, if you think that your garden requires landscaping, it might be a good idea to consider a fish pond or water garden.

People think that a fish pond takes lot of looking after, but that is not inevitably the case. The truth is that the bigger the fish pond, the less work you have to put into it. This is because a large pond can create its own ecosystem, whereas a small fish pond requires help.

The ways that you can help a small fish pond be a decent environment for your fish are as follows:

Pond Filters – use a pond filter with a good pump. Do not forget that you could use a solar powered pump. It will save on the environment and on your wallet. You should use a pond filter on a small pond, because the ecosystem cannot cope with all the plant waste of a small ornamental pond on its own. A pond pump will feed the filtration system and a waterfall or fountain if you want.

Your pond filtration system should be left running twenty-four hours a day, but you can not just set it and forget it. Make sure that the pump is running daily and keep the filter as clean as necessary for it to do its job. You may find that you have to clean it two or three times a week in the summer and autumn but only once a week in the winter and spring.

Leaf Netting: stop leaves from clogging up your pond in the autumn. The net should be poised a foot or so above the pond to prevent autumn leaves falling into the water and rotting.

Feeding: all fish should be fed fish food, not bread or scraps. Some fish ought to have specific fish food in order to preserve their colour. When you buy your fish, the salesperson should inform you what they eat. In general, the larger the pond the less trouble feeding becomes as they will eat natural food like insects, grubs, larvae and flies.

Fish need less food in the winter when they become semi-dormant and live off the fat reserves that they built up in the warmer months, so give food often in the summer and autumn, but less often in the winter. You must look to see if surplus food is left floating on the surface.

Winter: make sure that there is a hole in the ice so that the water can take in oxygen and the fish can feed if they wish to. You can buy a floating de-icer or some people float a round football in a hoola-hoop, which seems to work unless the temperature gets very low.

In fact, the hoola-hoop is a good idea all year round really. If you place the food in the hoop, it stays in one place and you can see if you have given too much. It also makes a nice site to see all the fish feeding in a group.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site right away for some extra special deals.

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September 25 2010 | Gardening | No Comments »

3 Easy Tips For Successful Container Gardening

Here are several tips for creating a wonderful hanging basket or container this summer. The first is to use an artificial soil composed mostly of peat moss. Good soils such as Fafard or Pro-Mix use perlite, peat, and other ingredients to produce a soil that will not compact over the summer. Real garden soil compacts and turns into concrete under the pressure of regular watering. And when it does, plant roots stop growing because they require good open spaces to move into and absorb nutrients.

Hard, compacted soils do not grow good plants so do not use real soil in your containers. I re-use my artificial potting soil from year to year. I dump it out of the pot. Chew it up with a shovel to cut up all last year’s roots and add approximately 10 % by volume of compost. The compost increases air spaces and gives plants a boost in healthy nutrition.

Feed your plants weekly. Nitrogen, the engine of plant growth, is water soluble and as you water your containers from the top the dissolved nitrogen is leaving from the bottom. I use a fish-emulsion liquid feed with seaweed to provide all the trace nutrients my plants require and recommend it highly.

You can use any liquid plant food (like Miracle Grow or Shultz) to promote growth. Compost tea is the Cadillac of liquid plant food and if you make your own compost tea, your plants will respond with bigger and better blooms as well as increased vigour.

And finally, no matter the size of the container, it is important to soak it all the way to the bottom at each watering. Continue watering until water emerges from the pot bottom. This ensures the roots can reach all parts of the container and grow properly.

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September 21 2010 | Gardening | No Comments »

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