permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Dear Frank from FranksFarm

In your message dated 9/16/02 you ask for suggestions for planting in a two acre pond in south central kentucky. The people to ask would be at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC. For many years now they've raised waterlilies and various lotuses in a large park on the Anacostia River. They routinely deal with hard freezes for extended periods in winter, and have little problem maintaining a nice web of fish, frogs and other critters. They will know all the best varieties and where to order them-- they may even ship their own stock, I haven't asked.

When I lived in Washington I used to have a tiny back yard pond about 12 feet across that was full of water lily, bulrush and ordinary fishbowl-type pondweed, and grew algae like crazy. There was so much stuff I had to routinely clean it out and use some of it in the garden. The rest of the excess I would try to give away to anyone who wanted to stock a koi pond with ornamental plants.

Yes, it was also full of koi. These little guys used to winter over just fine, under the ice-- despite the fact that my pond was maybe 18 inches deep. They would eat the algae so I never had to feed them-- too much fish food would over-fertilize the place and make the water murky. You couldn't exactly call my pond in balance though, since I had to clean a couple of inches of gunk off the bottom every fall to keep it from poisoning the fish. Not a pleasant job, but rewarding if you had a vegetable garden to use the gunk on. I found it to be a really good soil amendment.

And the fish-- well, every time you turned around the population doubled. People didn't want to open their door to me any more since I always wanted to give them some extra koi I had. I was like the guy that grows rutabagas-- people would look out from between the blinds to see him coming up the walk with his bag of rutabagas, and they wouldn't answer the door.

So if you want a lot of koi (plain old goldfish or carp will do too) and muck and water lilies and just a ton of aquatic biomass, put together a pond like this one and experiment-- let the various species duke it out among themselves until they come into balance. Your frogs will love it and you may get some bats (this kind of a pond is not insect free!). 

The only thing I did to artificially prep the place was to condition the water. In the middle of the city I had to replenish with tap water whenever we didn't have enough rain, and I needed to dechlorinate it. This kind of biosphere, in my experience, is pretty hard to kill. Overfertilization is about the only way you can poison it, so be prepared to muck it out periodically.

Mike Elvin
Fuquay-Varina, NC