My latest garden fad has been around water gardens. Before you say it, yes, I know, my husband and I spent
a lot of time and hard work turning our goldfish pond into a garden bed. But what I had in mind was a lot smaller scale - just a decent-sized pot with the holes filled in, a few water plants and a pair of gold fish. And I wanted it at the front of the house where I'll actually see and enjoy it every day.
I already decided to use one of my colocasia "Amazon Queen" - they make so many babies I had heaps to choose from. Then I got a white water lily and some ribbon weed which oxygenates the water. Here they are in their temporary home whilst I sorted out their pond. The colocasia is the tall plant.
I got a nice pot and had to fill in the holes with silicone. Unfortunately I'm not very good at being patient with these things. t said to wait 48 hours to cure ... I waited 24. I tested it out by putting in some water for 15 minutes and it wasn't leaking so I thought it was good. This is my little pot all assembled.
And this is where it is in relation to the front garden. That big empty space is where the ficus trees used to be, it's still very open and stark at the moment until I decide what all to plant there. The zucchini got moved here because the front porch was getting a bit cluttered.
Unfortunately the next day there was a bit of water leaking from the bottom. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to start over again, pull all the plants out, empty the pot, let it thoroughly dry, put on another layer of sealant and wait a full 48 hours. But I can't bring myself to do it just yet, because of this: the main reason I wanted a pond in a pot. The water lily is in flower!
It's just so beautiful I can't bring myself to putting it in a bucket for a few days. I'll wait until the flower finishes to fix the leak, it's not very big anyway...
Unfortunately I also have to wait a few weeks from when the leak is fixed to when I can get some gold fish, so the water has time to settle.
My goldfish were very skittish when I first got them, they just sat at the very bottom of the pond. It took them a week or two but they've become more bold now. I've started tossing caterpillars into their pond when I pick them off my plants, and watched until I saw them suck them down in one bite. I managed to catch them in this shot when they were up at the surface eating algae off the ribbon weed. Good thing, because the algae was going a bit nuts. I've stopped feeding them fish flakes until they eat more of that algae!
