Putting in a Small Garden Pond

There you have it. Well’ you know, don’t you have to set your boundaries first? I do! It’s getting there. After I dig I will I will know how much of that liner I will need. I went deeper than I thought.

I’m going to start right here and go straight up here and go straight to the pump. I got a deep spot on that one side over there so they can hide from predators. I’m going to use that piece of slate here, it’s about an inch and a quarter thick. I’ve got the pond liner and I’m ready to go. What I intend to do is use this rock here for weight, and set the liner into the pond. We’ll hold it from 4 corners and that’s how we’ll set it up. Ok. I think I can work with it. Got pea gravel over there. That’s it when it’s full of water. My wife got this fountain at a garage sale for 5 bucks! Cool. Looks like it’s starting to clear. Today I added some more waterfall, and Diane added some Irises from over their. It’s been setup now for 2 weeks, the waterfall needs some more improvement and we got some rocks to go around the perimeter of it. We went down and bought some Koi.
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When I started this pond it was really clean and clear and I could see all the way to the  bottom and nice clean rocks and stuff but, we had like 1or 2 days just pure sun shine.and there you have it, all my rocks got green on me. We have added some chemicals to it and they say 3 treatments. Did that just say 90 degrees? Well, while it’s 90 degrees out here, um, well they don’t quite look like fish sticks yet so; I could just start on that side. Looks like the water is flowing but looks like it’s just at a trickle. Well, here we go! Here. Yes, ok back up. I think it’s 92 degrees now. It’s only a yard and a half, should be enough but we will wait and see. I might have to get up in there! I see yellow jackets & wasps are flying around looking for water, as long as they don’t make a hive near here, I don’t care. I want to plant the tree right there, it looks good. Good spot for it. It’s getting there. Got a tree there. Still got to cover up the back of this. From this angle it looks good. Green leaf maple here. Is that the oriental tree right there? Yes. Different kind of grasses, I don’t know, it’s just grass. One is a lily, what is that red one? A red head coleus. And you have your purple fountain grass, which is over by that light. and then over by that light is a lily. Stella Dora day lily. And we added some bricks back here to hold up the back. It was really green there for a while. Water looks pretty clear. It was really green there for a while. Put some of that algaecide in there; it helped. I didn’t do the full complete treatment, but I think it w as enough to make it clear. The hardest part was, maintaining it for a year, and discovering what things you need and don’t need. One morning I found the neighbor cat chasing my fish so; cats can be a problem. Best solution for that is a dog. The other times where a raccoon, got him. “You” are not going to go fishing any more; that’s right, you’re in trouble. There were several raccoons it took me a while to get all those. Birds, because it’s so close to the house it doesn’t attract like ducks. I don’t want ducks. The water quality looks very good, it’s nice & clear. I am getting some more of that algae growing on those rocks. I had so much of that algae in there I took some of those rocks out and cleaned them off by hand. Decided to do something about the algae and we went & got some of these plants, and put them in the tears.

What fixed this was, the plants and more frequent water changes. Also I put this quick shade up to keep the sun off in the afternoon. It actually helped. Most of it went away but is starting to come back because it’s starting to get hotter now it’s mid July. Some other problems I had were, some of these plants where so tight in there the water was starting to splash out and empty out this pond. My wife caught it today an threw a hose in there. What I think I’ll do is put a shutoff valve in there to keep it from emptying out. & you can buy those at the store. Like a float control. Yes, looks pretty good. Those water cress & water lettuces I guess that’s what they call it. That really helps with the oxygen, that really got rid of the nitrates that were in here that was causing the water to be green. If you ever look at your pond and it’s brown, well, the reason your water turns brown is because a raccoon gets in there, what they will do is sit in the shallow end take a bath while they eat your fish. So raccoons are terrible to have. Raccoons are definitely a problem.

Now this fantail here made it all the way through the winter. Surprisingly, I didn’t know he was going to survive the winter but he did. And the KOI did too. The whole thing froze over. Don’t be a fool, get off, you are going to be so regretting it. Yes, walking on water! It held me it’s about 3 inches thick. The waterfall froze over. Yea they all lived through it so. Didn’t hurt them a bit. No I didn’t heat the pond I just let it freeze. This is what I do in the winter. Well here is an update of my pond, and it’s kind of a wintertime vid. Still pretty cold out here, what I’m going to do is clean it out and I haven’t cleaned it out in 3 years and so this year I’m going to clean it. Just see how much of that stuff I can get out of the bottom there. Seams like I have quite a bit of debris, that’s floating around and I’ve cleaned out quite a bunch of it already. The lattice there keeps the raccoons out and blue heroins which we have here. Algae is good if you have algae growing in your pond, your ponds ecosystem is set up good, which means it’s growing good stuff and growing bacteria and stuff, you want that. You don’t want to get rid of all of it, although it looks neat without all of it but it’s better to have some algae in there. The fish like to eat it in the winter, and you don’t want them to eat when the water is cold. It’s not good for them. That’s why I really don’t get rid of all the algae during the winter time I let it grow so they have some thing to eat on, if they get hungry.

They’re pretty slow today. The only filter system I have is this pump there, which it looks like it needs to be cleaned out. That is kind of a portable one that my wife bought. The other one is that drain that goes up to the filter and into a Folgers can, it’s got some filtering stuff in there and I got to empty that too because it actually does a good job at collecting debris. As you can see the filter is plugged up, which it does pretty good just clean that out. Got to empty this one out a lot because it does remove debris. And it keeps the pond clear all year. It’s done a real good job for the last 3 years. All I do is hose them clean with water only. I have these plastic things that collect bacteria, and over here I take the really dense one and put it on the bottom. And the thicker one on top. And may be one more. When you buy these they are about $20 or $30 I can’t remember, but I bought extra. Got this from another kit. You don’t have to have all that many. You could just have the thick one and the thin one. And put it back together. And you’re good to go for about another month. Looks like I have good flow right now. All it does is pushes the water around in that direction. Yea, I’ll come back here in about an hour and I’ll see it nice & clear.

That’s pretty much what I do during the winter. Spring is coming up and I’m going to do some changes so, that video will be uploaded in a month or so. Well it’s been an hour, and looks like it cleared up pretty good. Well that’s my water feature, I think it turned out pretty good. Wish I could of built it a little bit bigger but that’s going to be enough for me. Thanks for watching.