Container pond...help

[King Edward]

Originally Posted by moondust

Regarding the oxygenators, I was thinking of buying Hornwort or Water Violet. For marginals I have bought a Flag Iris, Common Bullrush and a Kaffir Lily. I hope this isn't too much!

I don't know anything about the Kaffir Lily, but I very much doubt it should go in the pond. Is it Schizostylis, as in this article: How to grow Schizostylis, the Kaffir lily - Telegraph?

Flag Iris and Bulrush are both very vigorous and if allowed will take over the pond. Chances are they'll be growing in quite a fertile compost already (so they grow faster for sale), so I think the best thing to do would be to wash off the original soil and repot in plain sand/gravel. This has two benefits - it will reduce the vigour of the plants, and it will reduce the amount of nutrients entering the pond which might otherwise encourage excess algal growth.

I'd try Hornwort first for a submerged plant, it's quite vigorous and tolerant.

[moondust]

Yes that's the one, it's called Schizostylis (Mrs Hegarty). Oops... I'll just have to find somewhere else for it! Sorry if this is a stupid question but will the plants get enough nutrients to survive if they are only planted in sand/gravel?

[King Edward]

I think they should, although they probably won't grow very fast. You could try mixing the sand/gravel with either nutrient poor aquatic compost (which is rather expensive) or subsoil (not topsoil), perhaps 3:1 sand:subsoil.

As I said, though, these are both very large, vigorous plants which will rapidly take over if given plenty of nutrients.

Once the Bulrush gets established, you could probably move its pot down to the bottom (e.g. in the autumn), so long as you leave some live/dead leaves poking above the surface for it to breathe. It will provide better underwater habitat this way, and will probably look better.

[dampflippers]

Watch out for chicken wire.
If a hedgehog falls in it is quite sharp and could cause injury or get it's leg caught. The heavey duty plastic square mesh that they sell for using as a trellis would be better.

With my preformed pond, I used small marginal pots, threaded wire through the holes in the pot top or sides, and bent it into hooks so the pots could be suspended at the required depth and hooked over the edge of the pond (or tub). Worth a try.

[kathateria]

Originally Posted by dampflippers

Watch out for chicken wire.
If a hedgehog falls in it is quite sharp and could cause injury or get it's leg caught. The heavey duty plastic square mesh that they sell for using as a trellis would be better.

With my preformed pond, I used small marginal pots, threaded wire through the holes in the pot top or sides, and bent it into hooks so the pots could be suspended at the required depth and hooked over the edge of the pond (or tub). Worth a try.

Any pics of that?Sounds like a good idea

[moondust]

Thanks for the advice.

Dampflippers, is this the kind of mesh you mean?

Brown Plastic Garden Mesh 50mm - 0.5m x 5m : details and ordering - AutoGrow

Would 50mm mesh size be ok, or should it be smaller?