POND CLEANING

Hey Pals,

We had a very busy & tiring weekend. Mama & Papa had to drain water out of the ponds, clean them out, divide & repot waterlilies. Ponds are fairly easy to keep clean UNLESS you have huge ponds like we do & have lots of nut trees surrounding the ponds. If you have small ponds, it's very easy to put netting over the pond in the Fall to keep leaves & branches from falling into the water. If you live where it freezes & you get snow, the netting needs to be removed before snowfall.

We tried using netting on our huge ponds, but when you need to remove it for winter, leaves & branches still end up getting into the water. So it's pretty much a waste of time. It's much easier to drain most of the water out of the ponds once every year to remove leaves & branches. Plus this makes it easier to remove potted plants so that the lilies can be divided. Most waterlilies need to be divided at least every 2 years. Otherwise they grow so huge they will actually bust out of the plastic pot. The leaves & flowers become smaller when the plants haven't been divided. Some of the other water plants can go 3-4 years without being divided if you use big enough pots for the yearly growth.

Here we drained most of the water out of the smaller pond. Most of the waterlilies are kept in this pond since the hungry Koi are kept in the largest pond.




As you can see, our trees are still bare here in Iowa. Only the flowering trees have leaves sprouting now.

Snickers & I started out by supervising from the deck:



Can you see all 3 cats in the window?? They weren't happy since they had to stay inside of the house.


Here is what a waterlily looks like when you remove it from the pot. This blob actually has probably 10 lilies in it.


Next Mama has to lay the root ball on it's side & start cutting the plants apart. You must be careful not to cut the newest part of the tuber & must leave enough roots for each tuber.


Here is just one waterlily cut apart:


Next you need to repot the lily.


Some of the lilies already have flower buds growing. Can you see the bright green bud in the center of the photo? That's a flower bud.


These 2 pots are ready to go back into the pond. You have to keep spraying water on the leaves & stems so that they don't dry up.


Here is Papa in his chestwaders. He gets pretty muddy working in the ponds.


Snickers & I decided to come supervise by the Fish Shack. As you can see, Snickers is sleeping on the job again, hehehehe! (she has been very very tired since increasing her seizure medication, but as long as it keeps the Seizure Monster away, we don't mind.)


I make sure the Koi are safe from the Monster Birds. Those mean heron aren't going to get my koi.


Here is the large pond. We only needed to drain down some of the water to be able to get to the pots. This pond is much deeper then the other pond so most of the pots are put on the more shallow sides.



I try to keep the Koi entertained, hehehe! They are bigger beggers then Snickers & I are!

Here is Glitter Boy & Sugar eating:


Wirey Hugs,
Butchy, Snickers, Ruby, Sylvester & Scuby