Memorial Day Gardens

By Nancy G. deGarmeaux 

 Many of our readers are getting ready for the Memorial Day Holiday.   Hanging our flags,  putting out our porch furniture, slipping in our screens, cutting grass, planting bulbs and flats of flowers, making our annual trip to the greenhouse for plants and flowers that will beautify our yards and water gardens.  As we add potted plants to our decks and patios, lets not forget the pots of flowers in our ponds.  Whether you use a contained plastic squat pot, open weave container or fabric basket, be aware of the relative  benefits and drawbacks of each.  The purpose of the pot is to keep the soil and plant together and where you want them to be without dirtying the water or damaging the pond.  Just be aware that plants in open weave or fabric baskets many need  transplanted more often.  As plants mature, their roots naturally seek open water.  If you wait too long to transplant, you have to extricate the plant from the container and you may damage the roots. 

     If your pond has large hungry fish, you may want to” top” the pot with some “lava rocks” as these rocks have a sharp surface and it is uncomfortable for the fish to suck them up. 

     Pea gravel is another medium you can use to dress the top of your pot, pretty stones or sand can be used as long as it is dark  in color.  Toppings for your pot should be dark in color as it will make your plant look greener, lighter colored toppings will make your plants look more yellow.  The right choice depends  largely on your personal preference.

      The mediums used for planting pond plants are as varied as the plants themselves.  The best mediums I have found are clay topsoil or sandy garden soil right out of your backyard!  Keep walking right past those potting soils in the  soil section of your garden center,  potting soil will float right out of the pot you put it in, it is intended for plants outside the pond not in it!  Kitty litter, pea gravel, pebbles, rockwool, and cocoa fiber have been used as well.  I have had problems with these mediums in the past, roots tend to get tangled in the rockwoo and cocoa fiber and fertilizer tabs don’t really work well in pea gravel or kitty litter as the nutrients tend to float right out into the water instead of into the plant.  Too much fertilizer in the water instead of the soil leads to algae bloom.  Happy gardening–Happy Memorial Day!