Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat How to start Pickerel Weed (Pontederia cordata)

CC, there are heating mats that you can put under the grow flats to keep the soil warm too. Sort of like an electric blanket but for under the pots.

When I say 2-3 I mean plants. They are cheap and availble on eBay.

I could mail you up some if you need.

Thanks for the offer. I found a supplier and have about 50 plants in the ground in the shallows. We'll see how they do. The supplier also has 2 other colors I can try if these do OK.

I'll have to try again, none of the 50 plants made it through the winter. odd that not a one made it but maybe they were harvested and replanted too late in the fall and were shipped without much moisture or dirt on the roots through the USPS.

When plants are moved East-West they are more likely to do well. North-South is a different story!

https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

I wanted to buy Eel Grass & American Pond Weed from a nursey in New England, plants there were already shutting down for the winter because of the cold. Here in Florida we are still in the high 80's. I will have to order & plant in the early spring so that the plants are in & growing before they are stressed with our 95 degree days.

If you bought yours in MI, perhaps a spring or late summer planting to get them established before the limiting stress factor in MI , your cold winters. Plants are bare root, they have lost many of their small & hair roots that they depend on to survive. They are in stress till these are regrown.

For the truly ambitious & green thumb want to be, get used gallon pots from the local landscape guy, fill with dirt & plant your pickerel weed, water once with a growth hormone fertilizer, leave outside in a sheltered area & keep moist with just water, wait till the nights are cold & then keep in the garage till spring but keep moist not wet. Once the plants are growing well plant in the pond. A slow release fertilizer tablet or two in the hole would not hurt at this time.

I got about 60 pickeral pond weed seeds {Ebay}, yes it does take 30+ days to germinate in a container of water. You then need tweezers to put the little seedlings in a container of soil & keep it very moist. Use a very fine potting or pond soil, I used some cheap course soil & lost some seedlings. I have about 15 little plants at about a dollar a each.

Got four bare root plants {Ebay} easier to get growing @ $5 each & a gift pond lily. They have rather quickly started multiplying in the gallon pots I planted them in.

The bare rooted plants are much more predictable, easier establish & multiply faster.

Canyon, were you able to try to get the picker weed growing this past year? I did end up planting 38 plugs and then 30 arrow arum. The muskrats absolutely crushed them within a month. Going to have to figure out a fence mechanism.

I use brushy branches from honey locust trees. They have worked well for me and rot away after a few years. By that time the plants are well enough established that they can tolerate some pest pressure. However, left unchecked, muskrat populations will explode and denude the whole pond. Fortunately, my neighbor is a trapper.

Dergib,
No, the plants went in probably too far into the end of the growing season in the fall and maybe what ever life has to go down into the root to start back up again in the spring wasn't there.

I plan to start again in the spring. I tried the seed trick but none of them germinated. I'll probably try the bare root ones next. I have no muskrats, guessing my dog takes care of that. I do have painted turtles and had a pair of peking ducks but now am down to only 1 (guessing a weasel/ferret took the other one out on a cold snowy night a month or so ago. Just saw the signs of something that 'wrung the neck' and did some damage in the neck area but the rest of the duck looked pretty unscathed although it was quite dead.

We used standard garden fencing and started the bare root plant in pots to get them going before final planting. Fencing was in all year and as a bonus the frogs laid eggs in it too.