How and when to fertilize bog plants

[MajorDan]

While looking for bog and pond plants to order on-line I read that the plants need to be fertilized monthly. Does this apply to bog plants? If plants are in the pond in a container do they need to be fertilized? I put Osmocote in the containers for water lilies and pickerel rush but am going to order some new bog plants and submersibles that the sites say to fertilize. Any advice would be great.

 

[Lisak1]

This is kind of an evolving answer. In the beginning when your pond is new and your fish are small, you may find your plants struggling a bit. But as things develop, you'll never need to worry about fertilizing them. I would avoid even attempting to fertilize unless you feel the plants really won't survive without some help. Let the pond do the work as much as possible.

How to fertilize can be a tricky question, as you want to fertilize the plants without getting fertilizer in the pond. I've used fertilizer spikes in potted plants, which work great and are simple to use - just poke them down into the pot with your plant. When I realized my bog plants were lacking iron, I "fertilized" them with some steel wool - just shoved some chunks down into the gravel near the roots. Just remember that anything you put in the bog will get washed into the pond. The fastest way to get an algae bloom is by introducing fertilizer into the pond.

 

[Faebinder]

I second the point about iron. It seems that iron is always the reason the plants are not ideal in a bog. Clearly the fish food does not have sufficient iron levels for the plant and the fish.

Iron overdose can kill a fish just like it can kill a human. Be careful of putting too much iron in a pond but i bet its hard to overdose a pond with iron considering all the plants will suck it up big time.

 

[mrsclem]

I don't fertilize my bog. The whole purpose is the bog removes the nutrients from the fish wast to grow the plants. Last year after I rounded up fish for a sale, my bog went yellow. Not enough fish to feed the plants! This is my big bog today. I need to pull out a lot of the water celery as it is taking over.

 

[addy1]

I never feed the bog, even when brand new. As the plants filled in the fish had babies, it all balanced out.

 

[BKHpondcritters]

We do fertilize our water lilies during the summer (insert a fertilizer tablet in the gravel near the base of the plants) but other than that we never do anything for the other plants. They get subjected to 'tough love' and are required to eke out a living by sucking extra nutrients out of the pond water (since that is their primary purpose, according to me!)

 

[Jhn]

Like the others, I don’t fertilize my bog plants or really any of my plants that are growing bare root in the pond, which in the main large pond is pretty much all the plants. In the juvie turtle pond I have lilies in pots, which I do fertilize with spikes.

 

[MajorDan]

Like the others, I don’t fertilize my bog plants or really any of my plants that are growing bare root in the pond, which in the main large pond is pretty much all the plants. In the juvie turtle pond I have lilies in pots, which I do fertilize with spikes.

Do you have water lilies growing bare root in pond?

 

[Jhn]

Do you have water lilies growing bare root in pond?

yes,The lilies and lotus I just wedged the tubers between two rocks in the 18-20” deep portion of the pond. My pond is about 16-18ft wide and 35-40ft long, so the shallow part of the pond(about half the pond) I pretty much just let the plants go crazy for the most part. Just need to weed back the lily and lotus tubers every couple years.

 

[BKHpondcritters]

We also plant the lilies directly in the gravel on the bottom.