My goldfish pond

[CountryEscape]

I'm not a farmer, but I know they are pressured to have bigger and better every year, so I won't try to tell them to stop. It's their right, and they are heavily regulated. But, I CAN stop it from drifting to my ponds and killing my fish. That's the easy part! The fact each year in early August my petunias die off for no apparent reason has me now wondering if that could be the issue with them as well. So, next year, I'll put some of the hanging baskets under the tarp, leave some out, and see if there is any difference! I may be onto something here.

 

[CometKeith]

I have problems with petunias too, but I doubt it has anything to do with your neighbor spraying. :cheerful: The ones closest to our house always do best and the ones by the pond seem to die off in mid summer especially the one more out in the open. I don't know what is killing them, but when I dumped out the dirt from one of them there were a lot of slugs in the dirt. Maybe they were eating the roots?

 

[CountryEscape]

That's probably more likely to be my problem as well. I use a weak MIracle Gro solution all year long when watering daily, and then all of a sudden they die, sometimes within 24 hours they go from healthy, green, blooming, to DEAD! I wondered if I needed to add potting soil or stir up the soil they were in or something. Still trying to figure out this phenomenon. Mine are in hanging baskets about 15' from the house, and others in pots above the ground near the house. Some east, NW, W and NE. All have the same dying problem. :-(

 

[callingcolleen1]

Actually the petunias die off cause of a bug called Thrips, not sure if spelled right, but they are very very small and most petunias all dies off everywhere cause of this little bug. You need to hack the plant back good and wash off as best as you can. There may be a organic non toxic spray available at your garden center. If not go with the toxic chemical spray and risk your life of just chuck the plant and next year give the plant a good hair cut in July as that can help.....

 

[CountryEscape]

Never heard of those bugs, Colleen. Maybe that's not something that is prevalent in this area, not sure. I'll have to check into that! But the local town that I drive through has these HUGE hanging planters of petunias. I'm not even sure how large the actual part is that has potting soil in it. The plants hang down at least 5' and are hung WAY up on the electric poles all through town on the main street. The Garden Club takes care of watering them, and I'd like to know their system, as they obviously know how to keep them alive and blooming. I need to know what they are doing differently that I'm not doing. I thought maybe they needed to have the dirt refreshed or something like that, but I'm positive the plants I just described are not taken down, and are not cut back, they just bloom profusely all year long, and still are right now. Mine started dying and some died really fast, within 48 hours totally dead, about a month ago, which was about the same time as the pond fish problem. And, I seem to recall it happened last year, and thought maybe the kids forgot to water them in Aug. while I was gone, so maybe it has nothing to do with that, it's the chemicals sprayed on the surrounding fields and drifted to my yard. We shall see ....

 

[callingcolleen1]

I just looked up the bug called thrips, they are also know as "corn lice"! They are very very small and most people don't notice them. They alway go after sweet smelling petunias, I too had my petunias dye off quick one year, they can also come in big swarms....

 

[callingcolleen1]

When the farmer sprayed his corn, the "corn lice" that managed to survive, ran for safety and fled to your pretty petunias! Ha ha ha, must laugh at them now, cause I got rid of them when I got rid of the petunias. I only grow a very small amount of petunias now, and mix them well and hide them between other flowers so the thrips don't find them so quick! If you plant many petunias in a big row or just lots of them, then the smell becomes very overwhelming, and the thrips find them quicker.... I am sure you have thrips too, they seem to be everywhere. Cut them back good to in July and that will cut back the bugs too.

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks for the advice Colleen. Okay what a non eventful summer for my pond. Not one fish born and just one died during mating season but the other 31 doing fine including all the babies from last year... my three frogs got larger and no new additions I can discern to that group despite thinking I had a tadpole or two rummaging around.
I made no changes in the size of the pond or waterfall and no crisis with water quality. I just relaxed and enjoyed it. This is the first year I could do that.

 

[callingcolleen1]

I am sure you had babies Keith .... they just all got eatten!

 

[addy1]

Thanks for the advice Colleen. Okay what a non eventful summer for my pond. Not one fish born and just one died during mating season but the other 31 doing fine including all the babies from last year... my three frogs got larger and no new additions I can discern to that group despite thinking I had a tadpole or two rummaging around.
I made no changes in the size of the pond or waterfall and no crisis with water quality. I just relaxed and enjoyed it. This is the first year I could do that.

Sure is nice when you can just enjoy your pond! I have that setup, just enjoy, very little work involved. Glad you relaxed and enjoyed Keith!

 

[CometKeith]

Colleen, yes. I still even now see the males chasing around the big red comet female each morning so I'm sure there were a lot of eggs and fry this summer. It's interesting that the pond kind of takes care of itself. When there aren't a lot of hungry mouths you see babies and when you have enough then the population of fish stops expanding. Also sadly when you have too big of a bioload it takes care of that too.

I agree Addy, To me that's a perfect pond when it takes minimal outside intervention and just hums along... If the pond is balanced right it shouldn't take a lot of upkeep.
I didn't spend too much time with it this year other than the morning coffee or an evening beer sitting by the pond feeding the fish, and some get togethers with friends or family hanging out by it watching the fish and frogs.

 

[addy1]

Now if I could just get my gardens to take care of them selves.

 

[CometKeith]

Addy, you could move to Washington State and that would take care of the watering!

 

[addy1]

Addy, you could move to Washington State and that would take care of the watering!

lol I don't water anything except the veg garden. What I need is a self weeding garden.............

 

[CometKeith]

We visited our daughter at U of Illinois yesterday for fathers weekend. It was really a nice day and we took a walk to the park close to where she lives. Here are a few pics of some large koi we saw in a pond there. Tonight we had an unexpected visitor. It was just sitting on the edge of the pond watching the fish and didn't move much even when I took it's picture and tried to scare it away.