Hello from So. Jersey

[Arey]

HelloEveryone, and a wave of the hat to Dave54
I'm Arey and I live on a barrier island off the So. Jersey Coast. I've had a garden pond for over 30 years and it's about 940 gallons. I found this forum while googling "brown slime on rocks" and "string algae on Hornwort." I used to have goldfish, but several years ago removed all the fish and gave them to my plumber to give to his sister-in-law to replace the ones she had that the Herons had eaten. Unfortunately, the Herons were still hungry. I removed the fish so I could have a true wildlife pond for the Fowler's Toads. Aquatic Insects, and the damselflies and dragonflies. However, on the evening of Oct. 29th last year, my pond got topped off with several inches of brackish salt marsh water, and generously stocked with various killifish and minnows that washed in on the storm surge. If anyone would like reccomendations for pond plants that don't mind being innundated, feel free to contact me. Last Spring I removed about 50 or so baitfish back to the backbays (that's what the water behing barrier islands is called around here) and since all the tadpoles have morphed into toadlets and left and the toads aren't mating anymore my bait trap is back in the pond and I'm catching more killifish.

The photo is of my Golden Club plant from Spring of last year. It was difficult to obtain, but was on its second year in my pond and I was quite proud of it. It did not survive being immersed in brackish marsh water.

 

[sissy]

welcome and that is an interesting plant and it grows in the pond HUH ,Is it hard to get because it is rare and is it tropical .You have a right to be proud it is a neat looking plant

 

[sissy]

looked it up and says it grows in shallow water or marshes and can be invasive plant for some areas .Says it is like a calla lily without the spathe,but also says it really cleans the water

 

[Arey]

It was a neat looking plant. After the storm, it was a very dead looking plant. It's not tropical, and it is Winter hardy so even when the pond iced over the winter of 11-12, it survived well. By March 24, 1912 it was already putting up new shoots. By March 2013 I was in such a funk that I was just breaking off shoots of Water Willow and sticking them in pots where plants had died. Water Willow (Justicia Americana) is now my favorite plant. It's winter hardy, brackish salt-marsh water hardy, and break off a shoot with roots- poke a hole in the mud with your finger-stick the shoot in the hole and put a rock on it to hold it down until it roots hardy.

 

[sissy]

Water willows are very invasive here at the farm ponds .They have a hard time controlling it

 

[Arey]

That's the advantage of having a 940 gallon liner pond. I could have things which in a clay bottom pond or natural pond or lake would be a major menace. I even had crisp edged pond weed (another flood casualty) which in a lake can snarl outboard boat motors, and in the summer turn a lake of pond into an unpleasasnt mess.

 

[Carolyn22]

Arey

love the plants - I also love your black kitty!

 

[addy1]

Love the golden club, it is very pretty.