The truth about water gardening

The truth about water gardening, or at least the truth about how I practice water gardening. look it up on the web and you will receive detailed instructions on how to build and maintain a pond, whether it be a water garden or koi pond (the biggest difference is the depth of the pond). Like you are really going to build one yourself large enough to keep koi in.

Chances are if you want a koi pond, you will hire professionals to build a koi pond for you. They will bring in their backhoe and their trucks and many workmen and when they are finished you'll have a professionally built pond costing you at least $7,000.00 dollars and maybe a whole lot more and it looks great but artificial.

Me, I purchased a liner for about $300.00, a pump for around $90.00, some tubing for less than twenty bucks, a $5.00 bucket and some foam for twelve. My hardside liner set me back another $80.00 and about forty dollars for a pump and another five bucks for a second bucket. I did the digging myself and hunted down the rocks with my shovel and a bucket to carry them in.

My pond looks just as artificial as the professional looking ponds and brings me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. The frogs love it for sure and with my wife's bird feeders close by, my back yard is a virtual paradise for fish and fowl.

One thing I really like about having the pond is watching the changes that take place. A frog lays eggs which hatch into tadpoles, which turn into tiny frogs. Dragonflies come by fish breed and babies are born.

My neighbors enjoy my backyard almost as much as I do. Actually, they have more time to watch the birds and fish than I do so maybe they get more pleasure and don't have the work and expense of feeding and maintenance.

Yea, I have more problems with algae than a professional built pond has but not because it is a do-it-myself project but because I am not a wealthy person. A proper filtration and UV filter system could easily set me back a thousand dollars or more. I prefer to wait on mother nature and my trees and plants will grow and eventually I'll have the proper mixture of sun and shade anbd water plants and I won't have algae problems and a nicer looking yard from all the additional plants i put in.

Yes, I start most of my plants from seeds so they take a few years. It's kind of like having your cake and eating it too. Some people buy and apple, eat it and throw the core in the trash and then buy another apple. Me, I save the core, placing it in potting soil and in just a few short weeks I have a little apple tree. I know it takes a while for the tree to grow large enough to purduce fruit but it will one day and I have a tree to landscape my yard withand provide me with free apples for many years to come. The same thing with peaches and cherries and grapes.

My apply trees I planted from seed last year are already six feet tall and my peaches bore fruit this year as did several of my grape vines. My koi had babies and my goldfish had lots of babies.

One thing I've learned. There is a whole lot more going on in my backyard than one would imagine. Like the good book says, "Be still and know."