Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Plant Source

I'm in East Texas, close to Tyler.

My pond is dug and I'm thinkinf of adding plants as it fills.

Does anybody have a recomendations for supplers of water plants?

What about type of plants?

Thanks,
Eddie

Eddie,
My suggestion is to wait and see what happens. Natural plants should grow when your environment is "right". Then, adjust your plant community, if need be.
Planting plants often fails in new ponds, unless you are prepared to move them, fertilize and otherwise nurture them.
Once your pond becomes established, you will see where plants want to grow, where they won't, and what types of plants like which soils and depths. Then, if you want to plant a different species, your odds of success rise.

Thanks for he info. I've already orderd 200 Anacharis stems to help get things started. My pond is only about 1/3 an acre and strictly ornamental.

Have you learned about Anacharis?

wkrvpark, I agree with Bob, have you studied about and observed "wild" growing Anacharis (Elodea canadensis or E. densa). There are much better oxygenators than Anacharis (Elodea). I think Elodea will cause you way too many problems even in an ornamental pond. Why not stick with flowering marginals and various colored hybrid water lilies?.. Since you are in the south, instead of Anacharis look into dwarf sagittaria and corkscrew eel grass. These underwater plants when established will NOT grow real tall, promote clean pond soils and crowd out many less desirable invasive wild water weeds such as Elodea, filamentous algae, milfoil etc. If you don't like these over time introduce Anacharis later but don't start with Anacharis. Anacharis is rampant, will form dense thick mats or beds that water cannot circulate through and dense mats will promote thick black mucky, smelly bottom conditions. When the Anacharis arrives, put it in the garbage can. A few years after you plant it, I think you will spend a fair amount of money trying to kill it.

If ever you are tempted to try aquatic plants at random, plants which you do not have much information available on, it's always a good idea to set them up in a couple of positions which are easy to monitor...

Some plants react badly to being moved, may not like extreme heat and sun, or the ph of the water and appear to struggle quite severely while they adapt

Its a good idea to have a 'nursery' area where you can start things up and see them develop over a period of time, before deciding they are beneficial or invasive, to your location... you can take your time researching the variety, before commiting them to run amok a pond where they might run wild far more succesfully than you had imagined...

A nursery area for plants might be as simple as a shallow area sheltered from critters, where you can set up a tray of plants and measure their progress, It could be a large tub with a few holes to permit water to circulate... Or a side pond large enough to accommodate a range of plants...

An 'isolation' area can give you the chance to see what bugs and critters came along with the plants, before you apply a chosen disinfectant to 'clean up' new plants...

A 1/3 acre pond is not so bad to hand weed plants if they get rampant, though one thing I've noticed with anacharis, is it has a tunneling habit. When it gets to dominate its habitat, and you want to thin it out, you are tempted to rip it out, not knowing it springs back, far worse from the rooted sections left behind...

When anacharis gets among waterlily positions, it is quite capable of killing these beneficial plants off by choking the ground around the waterlily, starving out light to the crowns through the Winter months

You might like to look at hornwort as a submerged aquatic, it does not have a rooted habit (making it easy to weed) has an algae resisting habit (it discourages algae from forming) and it's the last plant fish or critters want to eat (it does not taste good) Which makes it quite a good choice for fish spawning areas creating a sheltered habitat for fish tiddlers...

On a pond your size of 1/3 acre, you definitely want to steer clear of ANY plant with a habit of rampant tunneling growth, or rampant prolific seeding habits, also the 'tiny' floaters which might run rampant across the surface area... at least the surface floaters are fairly easy to control (though laborious)

The likes of anacharis (ferocious dense rooting habit), large cat tail types (might multiply x20 a year, ferocious tunneling habit), native lotus (can spread 20' a year sub soil), plantain (drops 2,000 seeds a year), water hyacinth (multiplies x1,000 a year).... if you encourage rampant plants like that, you will find a year or two down the line you may have a nuisance which can be measured by the ton and the week to remove...

Invasive types can quite possibly destroy the very thing you had hoped would be easy to maintain... which would have been achieved had beneficial plants been established in the first place...

Regards, andy
http://www.members.aol.com/abdavisnc/swglist.html
http://community.webshots.com/user/adavisus
(photo albums of aquatic plants and descriptions)

Thanks for the advice. My experience with Anacharis has always been good, but on a very small scale. Now that you've scared me away from it, I'll look a little more befor doing anything.