Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat hydroseed results

after pond renovation, i hydroseeded disturbed grounds in november 2005. i hired it out but helped customize the seed bank in the mix. we had some native wildflowers before, and they have blended in with the hydroseed job. spring of 06 was great, the grass and wildflower growth exceeded all expectations, but i wondered how it would last. so we're well into spring of 07, here are some pics i grabbed last weekend.

Nice color, Dave. Bet the birds and butterflies are diggin' it, too. That's our W.H.I.P. goal. We'll see what my mad-scientist seed vendor comes up with.

Wow that is beautiful.

Cool!

The red flowers in the first pic look like what grows along the road here. Do you know what they are called?

Gorgeous, D.I.E.D.

I can hear light, airy classical music playing in the background when I look at those flowers.

Awesome, DIED. I love wildflowers. The reds look like some kind of clover? Are those Cali poppies at the bottom? I planted some wildflowers last fall, but my bro-in-law bush hogged where I planted them. Maybe next year.

thanks fellas.

it is really pretty this year. what's amazing is how fast it all dries out and turns into a scene from the serenghetti (sp?)

right on burger......yankee, the red is crimson clover from oregon, orange is CA poppy, blues and whites are lupines, the little yellow guy is mimulus (monkee flower), and the purple is locally known as "chinese pagoda". its actually a relatively small sample of the all the stuff here.

theo, at my place, if you put yer head on the ground you clearly hear Stevie Ray Vaughn reverberating through the ground.

b'ski, you think the deer are cute now? wait til you get a great patch of wildflowers going, and the next day, all the tops are gone. good luck meeting the WHIP goals!

I still use an age-old practice of preserving my tops with sandwich baggies.

WOW that looks really nice!

D.I.E.D,

Really spectacular. Your place is so much more than a great pond. I was thinking that such beauty might even sooth and mollify your fish, then remembered that you had stocked RES this spring.

brettski, you better go to price club....or is it costco now? buy in bulk

wicked, i reckon it looks just a little different than louisiana, especially when you see it in two months, you'll think 'it never rains in CA'.

yolk, my lunker GSF have a pretty serious attitude too, despite what my buddy jeff may have this forum thinking, the underwater realm is not soley controlled by Zilon.....a little known fact is that there exists a decades old subaqueous cold war.

edit...and yes, i can hijack my own thread if i want to.

I didn't know that RES were capable of being involved in a "cold" war. They don't seem patient enough.

Beautiful photos Dave. Sorry I didn't get to your place last week. Next trip I will. Now keep all those flowers in that pristine condition until I get there.

GSF and RES cold war.... hmmm.... ya know ya really shouldn't feed the monkey...

Zilon and his terra firma puppet Dr. FrankenBruce are unusally silent on this matter. Perhaps they secretly dread the ominous dark finned cloud that gathers and the growing strength of the green sunfish berets within.

i wish i could keep these flowers going, but these winds the last couple days have taken their toll.....lack of rain will surely finish them off in the next couple weeks.

D.I.E.D,

Nice job! Really nice. Looks like some bluebonnets mixed in their also?

DIED nice pics. Did you notice the difference in the water (fertility) from this years pics to last years ?

D.I.E.D.
Very nice, that view and a cup of hot coffee in the morning, how can it get any better?

well another spring has sprung but not so much here. With the DRY spring most of our wildflowers didn’t do so well this year, but our native bush lupines were phenomenal. they are 2 to 5 feet tall and some are 10 yr old plants. these were not part of the post pond renovation hydroseeding, but beautiful nonetheless. my wife and i have nurtured an area of them ever since we moved in. There are also a couple pics of a dark blue ceanothus I planted above the pond a while back, it had a great display this year too.

We only had 0.5” of rain in March, none in April. For El Dorado County, it was the driest March in recorded history. The pond is already a foot down, I am very concerned about the fish surviving until next winter. Its gonna be a long summer. the aeration has made the difference for good water quality right now, a healthy olive green color, weeds kept at bay.

enjoy the pics..















if i have time, i'll try and throw in some poppy pics, but they are not anywheres near as beautiful as last year.

Reel purdy dave in el dorado ca. I think I'll take a photo of the red flower that grows along our road. They look very similar to the red ones in your first post.

Beautiful photos Dave. I really like the lupines.

It's hard to believe in looking at this photo that you and I were fishing 6 to 7 verticle feet down that bank in November.

Is your spillway running at all anymore?

The lack of rain is not good. Going into March we were doing pretty well with rain fall, now it looks like we're gonna be in trouble come the end of this summer. My pond was lower at the end of last year then I had ever seen it. I suspect that this year is gonna be no picnic.

I think the only plants that are gonna be happy are your cactus collection.

thanks gw and JHAP. the spillway hasnt run since early march, the pond has just gradually come down since late february...really sad there, and yeah the cactus are doing fine except for those the voles like to eat.

gw, are you referring to the clover? we have a native clover here w/ a light pink flower, but its real spiney after it dries out (like almost all plants around here). that crimson oregon clover is really nice stuff but it didnt like this dry spring, and may be doomed long term (not enough seed production this year).

Great pics.Thanks for the update.Im glad you hegded over a little and got a shot of yer pond too.I mssed this last year so this was my first look.Maybe youll get lucky and get some rain soon.

Dave what type of soil do you need in order to grow flowers like that? I have a problem with erosian on the back of my dam and was wondering if something like what you did would work? The soil is mostly clay.

thanks tom and james.

james, believe it or not, those lovely lupines grow in the worst possible soil you could imagine. its basically a clay loam that developed over weathered bedrock, so its clayey, rocky, not very deep in most places (<2 ft), and requires a pick ax to make a hole. sounds like you could grow them just fine

Dave they are just beautiful! Can you go over the process. Do I need to mow the grass down first add any type of soil?