Pond in Southern Illinois

[sissy]

the pond looks great but geeze I'm not offering to help with the leaves .Trees are nice but gosh they make a mess but in the end you have some great compost material with them .I have planted a lot trees here but I have the advantage of a hill that I'm up on and father wind comes along and blows them to leaf heaven .

 

[addy1]

Got leaves? ............you do have a ton of them. The leaves mostly miss our pond, the apples tree leaves are the ones that do get in, dependent on which way the wind is blowing. Our forest leaves are far enough back none get in the pond.
When you net the leaves, watch for frogs already laying on the bottom of you pond, I netted out 5 I threw back in.

 

[CountryEscape]

Thanks for the tip about the frogs possibly being in the leaves on the bottom, Addy. I wondered where they would possibly go. I had more problems with the corn leaves getting into my pond than leaves from trees, but they tilled the fields, so not so many flying around in the wind now. I still have a big frog in my bog, and another one on the lilies, although the lilies are pretty much died back. Caught a big bullfrog when the guys were putting new sheet metal on my old barn this past weekend. They were driving around barn with the lift bucket and spotted it. I rescued him and put him back into the farm pond. Your wood floors look super, Tim! You and Anne did a great job, I'm impressed.

 

[Sheetmetalman]

Well its spring and this is the first pics of this year. The patio next to the pond is basically done and looks nothing like it first did, its evolved I guess, lol. And we built a big tree and flower garden around it this spring to help block the view somewhat from the road. Ive added more plants in the pond and am generally happy with everything except I'm still fighting the string algae as can be seen in some of the pics. Put a red cedar and brick screening fence around the waterfalls "skippy" filter to help hide it a little better until the plants grow more to screen it. Also the fish are all healthy and growing bigger by the week so thats good news.

 

[Sheetmetalman]

More Pics

 

[Sheetmetalman]

And More Pics

 

[Sheetmetalman]

And the last Pics

 

[addy1]

That is beautiful! Nice fish you have there too The water does not look bad at all and didn't see a lot of string algae. What a relaxing beautiful setting you have.

 

[sissy]

Looks good and love the waterfall steps .String algae is easy to remove with a tiolet bowl brush and spray bottle of peroxide to spray it helps too

 

[j.w]

Looks lovely, you did a beautiful job and landscaping looks terrific. Nice woodsy setting, like you are out camping. What did you use to make the water fall. It does look like steps and the water flows down nicely. Bet everyone likes coming to visit by the pond!

 

[pondlover]

That is absolutely beautiful!

 

[CountryEscape]

I really like the height of your waterfall, and the way any splash is going to end up in the pond no matter how much wind. Great design! Love all the patio stones you've laid. It turned out super! And, the algae I'm seeing looks more like the fuzzy stuff on the edge. I had really bad case of string algae in early March, was growing 6" or so a day! Pulling it out by the handfuls. Then poured peroxide on the edge to kill it ... BAD IDEA! I misread using peroxide. Got rid of the algae, but thinking that is what has caused my koi pond to be so murky. Your pond is very clear! Looks wonderful! Thanks for sharing so many beautiful pics. You have a gorgeous setting there.

 

[Sheetmetalman]

Thanks everybody. J.W. the waterfall is made of 3 1/2 inch thick granite slabs that I got off a guy in northern Illlinois, they are so heavy it took a crew of myself, 3 of my brothers, my brother in law and 1 neighbor plus a pully n rope system strung between 2 trees to get them up the hill and onto a massive framework of 4x4 posts and treated lumber, originally I was gonna stack them on dirt but they were so heave I was afraid the dirt might settle enough for them to slide into the pond. Some of my early pics/posts from last year show the framework. Hey Patti, me and Anne was in your neighborhood ( Altamont) and went to Alwerdts for mulch and ended up buying some pond plants there. Thats an impressive place--had always heard of Alwerdts from coworkers at Stella D Oro and the Pipeline but had never been there till now.

 

[CountryEscape]

Yep, Alwerdts is a pretty neat place, and they are the only place around that has a GOOD supply of pond plants. I'm sure you noticed the pond there, did you notice the plants in that pond? I kept asking him to give me a start of them, and he would always reply, "Oh, you don't want that, it's invasive!" I asked him why he has it then. I figure any plant in a pond is invasive only for the pond, and we have to pull out the excess. Anyhow, it's called Water Fringe, and I got 3 plants off of Ebay, kind of was a group deal. Also got a tropical lily that is a day bloomer.
The joke with JW and Addy now is IF it's not totally invasive (takes over my pond by the end of the year), they want some starts of it next spring. LOL Anyhow, it's supposed to have a pretty ruffled yellow flower on it, it grows I think from either the bottom of the pond (my ponds are too deep, I think) or from pots. I'll post pics of the flower if mine bloom this year. Glad you found Alwerdts. They are expensive, but so are all the landscaping places. The only places that are cheaper the the big stores, and they have few if any pond plants.

 

[Sheetmetalman]

Well I tried something that I read from sombodies post on here about Hostas (1 of my all time favorite plants--which is convienant since in this timber its 1 of the few things that grows great in the shade) anyway someone said Hostas will grow directly in the pond so last week I tried it and as you can see from the Pics they were right--1 full week for the light green Hostas and 3 days and counting for the green and white ones. So far they are doing great even though I didnt get a good root system on 2 of them when I split them from their main plants. I just poured kitty litter from Walmart like Addy uses into wet pockets between rocks then planted them and put pea gravel over all the kitty litter, works great--thanks Addy for that Idea--I changed my free floating Lillies to kitty litter and fertilizer spikes like you had mentioned also and they seem to be doing a lot better than when they were just anchored in gravel. Thanks also to the member (sorry your name escapes me) who mentioned planting Hostas in the pond.