When you plant something that's marginal and may be only a few inches submerged do you use the "typical" potting soil for the plant or do you revise the soil mix to include some aquatic soil to minimize the soil from clouding the pond water?
Marginal plant soil
- Thread starter miamicuse
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I discovered that cat litter is the best planting medium. I used to buy the "aquatic plant mix" until I saw it was the same thing, just more expensive. Placement depends on the plant - I have Pickerel weeds planted between the pond border rocks, bare. But I also have Sunpatient planted between rocks, but it's in a square of underlayment with some unscented cat litter. All my bog plants are simply in pea gravel.
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Other than my water lilies, none of my plants are in containers, so they're all just planted in pea gravel on the shelves and along the streams/edges.
I just stick them in the gravel or wedge them between some rocks. Plant roots are dirt magnets - any time I have to thin out my marginals, the roots are full of dirt, as if I had planted them in the ground. Pretty amazing.
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Same here, tons of dirt around the roots.
Most of the time it's unnecessary to have any kind of soil, some pea gravel and it'll do fine. Hostas for example will do fine, you buy a potted Hosta, wash out all the soil, all that remains are roots, then you just put it in a void space between rocks or say in a pot and fill it with gravel, but they don't like being submerged. Fine probably isn't the right word cause they thrive in water.