Non Exotic Interlude

So we needed to add a few more goldfish on the raised pond by the bottom patio to give it a bit more impact. The resident goldfish there, although very healthy and seemingly amorous enough, don't seem to procreate successfully. More likely any eggs produced are promptly eaten or filtered away...

On our way to a nearby garden centre we took an impromptu diversion towards Wrest Park, an English Heritage property near us.

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Hop and Skip to a Pond Makeover

Saturday morning is usually a recovery period from the working week that's just gone past, a period when it's not always easy to make a decision on anything definite to do in the garden. Or even whether to go somewhere else instead or not unless there was something arranged beforehand.

Sometimes the best antidote to a cloudy head is an aimless walk in the garden first thing in the morning. And last Saturday I found myself wandering down towards the pond on the bottom patio.

Hmmmm....that Gunnera tinctoria is waking up nicely and looking good....

Which made me then think that it's been quite awhile since I last walked on the edge of this pond. And there are views of the garden whilst stood on it that are a treat by virtue of how infrequent I stand on it.

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Breath of Life

Amazing how putting plants in any space suddenly gives the area an instant breath of life. You put life, you get life back. That's how it felt when we moved plants in to our newly built shed and suddenly it's become a very nice place to hang out in.

Our Shed O'Fun is almost finished with just the final connections for the electrics still needs doing as well as some painting on the door and exterior wood. Both can wait for awhile when weather is much more favourable. It is however finished enough that we have put in some fish over a week ago (to also help kick start the filtration) as well as moved in some plants last weekend.

Before I proceed further a quick recap on how we got there starting from where we left off from our last update:

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Pre Christmas Tidbits

Time flies so fast, it'll be Christmas in ten days! Each year I tell colleagues at work that we should have our Christmas work party early in the month (which we did) as no matter how much preparation or psyching up one does, it always seems to get manic in the run up to the the big day.

Before I proceed further, first things first, many thanks again to the Telegraph for the little mention on their gardening section last Thursday!

Second, a couple of days late but lucky thirteen it was as we were featured on the thirteenth day of Cision's Advent Calendar, yay! There's a little q&a there so if you fancy a little glimpse of what we'll get up to during Christmas do check it out.

Now back to the preparation for Christmas, as an adult it was seems to take awhile for the season to sink in and it finally did last weekend which meant there are lots of preparation to do, which includes decorating and buying presents. We haven't even bought presents to each other yet. But there are the weekday evenings too to do things and I'm sure by end of the coming weekend we're all settled and fully ready for the day itself.

Relating this post to gardening, we still haven't made a decision yet whether to go for a real tree or a fake one this year. On previous years we go for a real one as the scent of it in the house is wonderful however they are so messy to get rid off after the festive season so practicality may reign supreme this time. Bringing up this topic in real life conversations, it still amazes me up to now how many people have strong feelings about using a real tree to decorate for Christmas,in that how unnecessary it is now to sacrifice a living tree just for decorative purposes that will only last for a few weeks. For that reason only fake ones are acceptable for those who feel that way. I understand the point and I'm still on two minds about it, seeming that trees coming from reputable sources are now farmed.

Real or not, that's the question...

I suppose a good fake tree is a one off purchase and will last for a long time. What about you, what are your thoughts about it?

Anyway, apart from Christmas the quarantine shed is finished (bar a few finishing touches) and the pond inside is now set up including the filtration. So it's something we're very excited about at the moment on top of everything else. Hopefully we'll move some fish in there soon!

How is your preparation for Christmas going? Whatever your plans are or what you're up to hopefully you're enjoying the process!

Mark :-)

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Building Ponds - Again

It seems like we always have a construction project on the go in the garden. The current one is the "shed of fun" we have blogged about recently. To add to our large koi pond, the shed of fun will house a growing on pond.

The initial idea behind this is to create a place that new fish can be kept before moving into the main pond. A sort of quarantine so we can check for parasites or disease and treat as appropriate before the fish enters the main pond. Treatment is much easier (and costs less too) in a smaller pond.  

As well as a quarantine pond we will also use this to grow fish on. We tend not to buy large fish, and often buy very small ones, to be able to appreciate the smaller ones in a large pond is difficult as they can get lost. 

The new pond will be about 2,500 litres (550 imperial gallons), and filtered by a Nexus Eazy Pod - an eBay purchase we will be collecting next weekend. We had considered a number of different filter options. Wanting to combine a number of factors such as ease of use, the space available, filtering qualities, initial costs and running cost.

Our first plan had been to use black box filters, and we actually bought one for this purpose, but having spent some time considering the set up we decided this was not for the best and went with an Eazy Pod. Fortunately a second hand one was for sale close to us, so that will hopefully work well (on both the pond and our wallet).

We were so busy working inside we didn't take any photos of the koi house. The door is has been made, and hung, along with a sturdy lock to keep unwanted visitors out!

Inside has been where most of our time has gone this weekend, with the front of the pond finished off and clad in uPVC tongue and groove cladding. We are quite fortunate to have a fantastic family owned builders merchant close by who have helped us through out our projects, either in suggesting products to use or just talking the time to chat us through some of the techniques to complete whatever project we were on at the time.

With the clear plastic sides this building will also be useful for over wintering some of our tender plants, and to that end we will add a shelving unit along one side to house them.

The pond liner will go in next weekend, and with any luck we will have the wooden surround finished around the top of the pond as well. The filtration will take a little longer to set up, we will need to pick up a number of additional items, pipes, connectors etc. However i'm sure this will be a lot easier to connect up than the filtration on the main pond.

Some of the connections on the main pond.

There's still quite a bit to do but we are on the final stages now. Pond liner and filters in next then we can start to play with the space.

The space next to the new pond will house a small table and chairs as well as also provide space for a number of plants to over winter. I can see us spending quite a lot of time in here over the winter months!

Gaz :)

(hopefully we will have more photos to share in the next update)

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Exotic Plants and Exotic Fish

As most of you know by now our main hobby is exotic gardening with koi keeping secondary to that. Although both coexist in our garden, our external and social endeavours for both rarely mix together, and we pursue both disciplines on separate occasions. We are active members of Kangei Koi Club and we all meet quite regularly and have been visiting each others pond, as well as meeting up once a month.  And being a koi club we talk mainly about, as the name suggests koi and rarely about plants and gardening.

But one of koi club buddies, Paul Randall to our pleasant surprise is actually into exotic gardening as well. And last Sunday he hosted a picnic and pond visit for the koi club. His pond is stunning but as a fellow exotic gardener naturally we paid as much attention to his planting as much as we did to his pond. 

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Product Review: Evolution Aqua Evo 55

Our koi pond has been up and running for just over a year now, and so far things seem to be working as intended. We were recently offered the opportunity to add an Evolution Aqua Evo 55 UVC by Swell UK. Evolution Aqua have been developing a range of good quality pond accessories over recent years with a full range of filters and accessories for koi keeping. A UVC on a pond system helps to reduce algae by killing the algae as the water passes through the UVC, it also helps steralise some of the bacteria in the water.

The Evo 55 is simple to fit, it comes with fittings to connect to flexi-pipe however as we have a rigid pipe based system we needed to use slightly different fittings. Fortunately these are of a standard size so single screw into both ends of the UVC.

All our filter equipment is connected to water proof power supplies, although there shouldn't be any water splashing about in the filter house we wanted to be extra careful, and so far this has worked well. It was a simple job to connect the power to the UVC.

With the filters operating for a the last 15 months, it looks like we had the right approach in over filtering and under stocking. The fish have really benefited being relocated from their old small pond, growing well and also having fewer problems. Cleaning the filters has also worked out as we had hoped, not taking too much time as its such a simple almost automated process. At first I had to follow the instructions each time but now it just is second nature.


We are hoping the water quality and clarity continues to improve as the filters mature and with the addition of this UVC. 

Gaz

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The Big Koi Pond Reveal

We thought it was about time to share with you all the finished koi pond, 2013 was quite a hectic year for us. So much so that we have only now prepared the photos from our koi pond to share the final result with you all. The build of the pond has featured several times on the blog in the past with many references and a series of posts documenting the build (part 1, part 2 part 3 and part 4). But its high time that the final finished pond makes a full appearance!

Just selecting the photos to illustrate the pond was a tricky task, these were all taken in July at the height of the summer - we were originally planning to share the pond with you all at that time, but then events over took us with the garden fire and subsequent home renovation taking our attention and energies. As we mentioned at the time the pond was thankfully unaffected by the fire, with only minor damage to some adjacent plants. 

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Lighting up The Jungle

Over the coming winter, once the house redecoration is complete, we have set ourselves a couple of tasks in the garden. I'm sure you wouldn't expect us to be doing nothing at this time of the year no would you!!  We have the quarantine pond to finish and also we want to add irrigation. However one task that has been long over due is to make the jungle part of the garden more illuminated.

With the new koi pond we added lighting to the pergola to illuminate the pond and fish, keeping it not too bright so as to not upset the neighbours. We also added lighting to the first and second raised beds, using small spot lights to pick out some of the more specimen plants. Mostly the plants highlighted are yuccas, which I guess was probably right as they are the most architectural in that border.

Lighting up the Koi pond

Yucca linearifolia

Yucca rostrata

I would like to add some light to the third raised bed and also the koi filter house, although now things are completed there I'm not sure I can hide the cables without disturbing the finish, so perhaps not.

With the fire and birth of the new Jungle Hut we changed the style of the lighting, adding a pendant and two wall lights, with which we are really pleased. We would now like to add extra lighting to that bottom part of the garden, partly to illuminate the pathway and also to pick out key plants.

For the pathways, I would quite like to have something like this post light from Zed Lighting, keeping quite a simple look to the lighting so the lights themselves don't steal the show compared to the garden itself. We have started to introduce a few other stainless steel elements into the garden so they would tie in.

Where we want to pick out particular plants we will use a similar low voltage solution to that we used in the raised beds by the pond. These were easy to install and being low voltage reduces the risks in the garden. 

I have seen a few gardens where they make a feature of the lighting using coloured lights to illuminate trees or other features at night, whist these can be quite impressive, I'm not sure that would work with the enclosed nature of our garden.

Having just walked down the garden with a torch to take photos of the Jungle hut it makes me realise just how important new lighting along the path in that direction will be, so when the jobs in the house are all finished I'm looking forward to new projects!

Gaz

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Never the Idle Dreamers

A summary and a monthly timeline of our Koi Pond project from start till finish...

May 2010 - Clearing the area

June 2010 - Construction of first raised bed and pathway begins

July 2010 - the Big Dig has begun

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Will it, or Won't it...

There is something of a suggestion from the met office that we may be about to get a longer warm spell, the BBC weather forecast for the next couple of weeks looks promising, with sunshine and warm temperatures predicted. There's no guarantee of course and we have had false hope before, I remember a couple of years back when the met office promised a BBQ summer and then we got a wash out. Although to be fair I think much of that was media hype rather than the Met office itself.

Last year there was no such promise, and the weather lived up to the lack of hype.... we had a wet cool summer that never really got going. This year we have seized the opportunity when the weather has presented itself with better opportunity for actually lighting up the BBQ and enjoying the garden.

Why use the kitchen when you can smoke out the neighbours? :)

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