Reading this week. Rock and Water Gardening: A Practical Guide to Construction and Planting
Description: Whether you want a small water feature of a series of waterfalls, this practical and extensive guide provides a host of inspirational ideas for using water in your garden. This book is well illustrated and has many practical tips for building ponds, fountains, and even smaller water features.
A few warm days in February seems to have caused the trees and early blooming flowers to pop up in the garden. The crocus and hyacinth bulbs that were not removed during pond renovation have come up and look extremely healthy. The large bradford pear tree is in full bloom while the smaller ones are just beginning to open. We are having a rainy few days with cooler temperatures in the 50’s so they should open shortly.
Here is a picture of the pond today (03/05/2011). You can see the rebuilt bench and the hemlocks. The japanese maple is a sliver of a stick still but putting on buds. You can also see the rebuilt waterfall but not from a good angle. You may also notice the plumbing change outbound side of the waterco pre-filter. Still so much work to do.
I purchased my first Japanese maple for the pond this weekend. It is a variety known as Crimson Queen. CQ is a mounding style maple which gets up to 6 feet tall and 8 feet around. I plan to keep it much smaller. I placed it near the weeping hemlocks of the left side of the pond. In summer it will be in the shade of the bradford pear tree in the morning and shaded by other trees late in the afternoon, so it will get some sun mid day. Once the bradford pear tree dies it will get more sun which is ok for this variety. The placement will help screen the neighbors house and pump once I move it. In winter when it loses its leaves the distant view is not too bad when viewing the waterfall straight on.
I took apart the right side of the falls to fix the leak this weekend and rebuilt it so water will more easily flow forward rather than seeking side outlets. I created a stepped look rather than a flat surface too, so hopefully once it has the black algae patina it will look more interesting than the large rock I had there before. It is supposed to rain today so I have covered it with plastic to keep the rain from affecting the mortar until fully dry.
Finished the bench this weekend finally. Also did some pruning around the yard and removal of dead plant material. Getting ready for spring, the pear and cherry trees are already starting to bloom slightly.
I took my family on a little winter get-away to Universal Studios and Epcot last weekend.
I spent a fair amount of time in Epcot Japan. they had a great koi pond and other interesting Japanese garden items like lanterns, pruned trees, Tea houses, and indoor rock garden. The buildings were also done in Japanese timber framing style with curved tiled roofs or thatched roofs. I wish I could have spent more time but the family is not into the Japanese theme the way I am. Here are some pics of the pond and a lantern (click image for a larger view).
Got a deal on a book on ebay for $.01 + shipping. Japanese-Inspired Gardens: Adapting Japan’s Design Traditions for Your Garden (21st Century Gardening Series)
I am still dealing with the leaking bog. I am having to remove the top layer of rocks and reset them in a different configuration. I never was really pleased with the right side of the falls anyway. I don’t have much time to devote to it since the days are so short this time of year. I should be finished by spring hopefully, so I can begin other projects.
I simplified the plumbing near the pre-filter today as I had planned. I tossed away about $60 in plumbing parts including a check valve I couldn’t get unscrewed from its threaded piping.
While at the store I finally found a 2″ pipe cutter. The kind that spins around and has a cutting wheel and tightens like a vise. The one in the picture is similar but my cutting wheel is stationary and the rotator wheel moves with the screw handle. This tool makes wonderfully straight cuts with no more effort than using a hack saw. Sometimes the right tool just makes things easier.
I would also recommend to folks building a pond under 2000 gallons to use 1 1/2 inch pipe. Easier to cut and cheaper for specialty items like valves. Most pumps are cheaper too in the 1.5 opening size.
The changes in weather seem to be wreaking havoc on the plumbing parts. I have a couple of new leaks in the piping above ground and some hidden ones that only seem to happen when the pump is running. I am still getting some capillary/tubing leaks from folds in the liner so I need to fold the liner back into the bog so it has nowhere to go.
I am going to simplify some of the out going plumbing from the pump so that should help that. I may need to create some extra routing openings with valves and temporary returns so I can narrow down the other hidden leaks. I believe I am getting some leaks around the jets too. I will have to dig a little to verify, but the ground is very wet around them even under the excess liner.
Other news – Emma (my Daughter) and I are planning to finish the rebuild of the garden bench today after church and girl scout activities. The multicyclone pre-filter has finally cleared the water to the point that I could see the leaves and gunk on the bottom and remove them. I should now be able to see the bottom drain in action when I fix the leaks and restart the pump. The crocus plants that have been around the pond for the past 5 years are starting to flower. They don’t seem to mind the contantly changing temperatures.
Still day dreaming about building the tea house. I was at a hobby store yesterday and saw they had model building wood that is in scale to standard lumber. A 6″x6″ beam is 1/2″ x 1/2″ in the crafting wood, a 1/12 scale. So I may try to build a model to serve as a template for building the larger tea house. It should help in determining wood needs, esthetics, roof pitch, and any special joints/angles needed. Sojis will be challenging at that scale, so I may just use wood or foam core and marker for the inner lines to represent the soji.
Update: The leak was bigger and harder to find than expected. After disassembling threaded joints and taping them with teflon tape and reassembling I stopped the minor leaks around the joints. I then started removing the liner and digging around the jets, no problems there. Then I noticed water coming out between the bog liner and the deep part liner, so I started removing rocks at the most likely spot. Sure enough the water had found or made a 1/4 inch wide x 1/2 deep hole at the side of the bog. I had raised the bog sides when I first noticed the back would overflow with the pump on high speed. The side of the bog did not get completely closed in so instead of water flowing forward it was going out the side. Hard to explain but glad I found it. I built up the mortar and changed the rock on the leak side. I just have to let it all dry again.
I stumbled into Pike’s nursery yesterday just to look around. They had a great Japanese temple lantern on sale for $250 but I didn’t buy it. I also saw a nicely formed Japanese maple but the price was a bit high. In the back I found some conifers that may work for my garden. I found two Canadian Hemlocks (Gentsch White) for $10 each, so I purchased them. The will reach a height of 3 feet and spread to 5feet wide with weeping foliage that turns white at the ends in fall.
One of the plants was already kind of leaning and lop sided so I think I will plant it at an angle to cover the rocks of the left side of the falls. The second plant is more upright and roundish so I will plant it behind the first near the left edge of the retaining wall to help hide it too. Pictures to come after planting.
My daughter and I also took on a project of repairing the bench by the pond. During the digging of the pond, it got burried under clay and rocks and acted as a good backstop for the mound of dirt. Unfortuately that wet clay damaged most of the wood. We tried unscrewing the bolts that held the wood on but found most of them were so rusted it was easier to break the rotted wood and then deal with the bolts. We scraped and sanded the metal sides and back, purchased new oak, and will be rebuilding it this week. We painted the metal parts with rustoleum to help protect them for the next few years. This was a good father daughter project and will keep her from asking “when are we going to build something” for at least a few months. She learned how much time and energy it requires to do even this simple project. Cost of repair materials $75 (vs New bench $95), 5+ hours of labor, Father/daughter time, priceless.
I went to a nursery yesterday to begin my search for plants for the pond area.
Things I like so far:
Mugo Pine, a mound of pine needles that gets about 5x5x3 high.
Japanese Black Pine
Weeping hemlock
Lilly of the valley – but it is poisonous to dogs.
Japanese maples of course
Mondo grass
Azaleas – need to find a small leaf variety
weeping cyprus – blue and can be trained like a border.
We had nice weather for January with a high of 68 today. So I used it as an excuse to install the multicyclone prefilter. I cut off the check valve and made another cut on the side plumbing.
There were no real directions to install the multicyclone but it wasn’t rocket science either. It comes with two union joints for inlet and outlet, as well as a union for the waste line. After gluing in the pre-filter I merely reversed the flow direction of the check valve and re-installed it and the original piping inline on the out flow side. this however led to several joints that were screwed in that leaked. I spent another 15 minutes twisting the piping and making the joints tighter. I may just redo the outflow circuit at a later date to simplify it. The image shows the pre-filter attached to my performance pro pump as well as all the plumbing going and coming from the pump area.
The system has been running for about 2 hours and there is a light layer of particles on the bottom of the filter’s clear base. I stirred the muck around the bottom drain and it went straight though to the filter. Some of the really light gunk still seems to flow back up and out but the larger pieces definitely fell to the bottom or swirled around a while. It may take days to notice a real difference in clarity of water. Especially since I keep finding more leaves and muck on the bottom of the pond. I wish I had plumbed an extra bulkhead for a pool vac.
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