johnkr: With the price of everthing going up (haven't received a raise in over six years) I have been trying to cut corners. I broke down last night and dug out the UV only to find out that the glass sleeve had shattered. Not to worry. My b-i-l gave me his when he filled in his pond. It's up and running now. larryl: Watercress is just starting to take off. My first three wl went belly up on me. The ones I purchased last weekend (wh and wl) are OK. I'm sure they'll take off once the weather warms up, and the sun comes out. Of course nothing kills duckweed (except koi). Anne: Have been having trouble finding azolla. That's what I had last year and my water was crystal clear. Not giving up yet. May have to wait until June. Heck, that only a little over a week away now. Jenny

I usually let all the algae stay in my 300 gallon stocktank ponds. It eventually would go away. No fish here. But......the lilies seemed to be very, very slow and I started thinking that the algae was taking nutrients away from them, so I pulled it out. Hopefully it will be of more benefit to my compost pile! I agree that it might have something to do with getting so hot so quick.

Final update, season is over and the harvest is in.. so how did the fish do? I massively overestimated how many and what type of plants I could grow. I could not rely solely on fish waste as a fertilizer since there is no significant source for potassium in the fish food I had to supplement it. I also had to occasionally add trace elements, iron and magnesium being the most critical. My goal was to keep my GH around 200ppm (13dH) and KH around 100ppm (6dH), this meant that I had to add small amounts of Epsom salt, chelated iron and a hydroponic trace element mix every other week (originally every week but after the huge rains stopped I was able to back that off), next year I plan to target 300ppm for GH. The biggest issue I had however was nitrogen, despite adding new fish and feeding significantly more in a day than I once fed in a week I still ended the season battling a nitrogen deficiency. I just could not get any reading for Ammonia / Nitrite / Nitrate on any test kits and I even resorted to adding Potassium Nitrate to battle the deficiency. If I planned to have the same plant load next year I would need faster growing fish like Tilapia, Trout or even Koi. While I may add one or two more fish on the whole however next year I will grow a less demanding mixture of plants and if necessary augment with Potassium Nitrate. Other items of note: - 2 inch net pots are not suitable for anything other than lettuce, strawberries or similar low growing plants. - There was no discernable difference in the growth of the plants started in rockwool, coconut coir or dirt except in the case of the plants started at the nursery which were root-bound when purchased and remained stunted all season. - Tomatoes were not a good candidate to be grown on the rails, they suffered severely through wind damage and many were broken in the heavy rainstorms we had in the spring and early summer. . As for this years harvest, the Tomatoes, as mentioned, had problems and only a few fruit survived to ripen, though those few were tasty. The peppers were another story, I got excellent yields from the Cayenne, Jalapeno, Poblano and Fish peppers I planted. The picture bellow shows one of the Jalapeno plants from the rails next to one grown in dirt, both plants were started at the same time from the same seed packet, the one grown in the dirt was grown in a well fertilized raised bed about 25 feet from the one grown in the rails. I have been growing peppers in soil for years and in our short season I would plant 4 to 6 Cayenne pepper plants to get enough dryable peppers to last out the year. The next picture is one of the 6 plants I grew in my system this year, the one shown was typical and I had already picked from it as many peppers as are on it in the picture, about as much as I would expect from a full crop of plants grown in dirt. In both these photos you can see the signs of the Nitrogen deficiency, the almost white leaves in the new growth. The Fish peppers were the big surprise, I normally grow them for the novelty factor and until this year I had never had all that many and had NEVER had one ripen, this year I have more than I know what to do with and the picture shows them in various states of ripeness, they really are quite attractive. As for the rest of the plants even after eating a huge number I have about 5 pounds of green beans in the freezer, they did quite well and were vary easy to maintain. The lettuce did really well until early August when it all bolted to seed, as did every Lettuce plant I attempted to start after around Aug .1. The strawberries were nice to have but not all that productive. One thing I didn’t really notice until quite recently was the fact that I didn’t loose anything on the rails to vermin. Normally I loose some of my crop to squirrels and some to insects but even though the plants in dirt took the normal amount of damage the plants on the rails had almost none, and the plants in the boxes had very little. You can even see on the picture of the Jalapeno plant from the soil the two peppers being eaten by bugs. Finally to the health of the pond, as mentioned the plants took up all of the Nitrogen I could supply and only after adding Potassium Nitrate would I see any levels on my test kits, the same can be said for phosphorous, at no time could I get a measurable reading. The water remained crystal clear and there was very little algae growth on the sides of the pond. Because there were no floating plants with roots to provide protection none of this years fry have survived (as far as I can tell), but the lack of shade also meant that my one lily plant constantly produced flowers into September, in the past it has been finished by the end of June. The fish remain healthy and while I didn’t get any babies this year I also didn’t loose any adults.

Hey, guys. I just got my wash tub bog garden started. Just dug a hole and sunk it, filling in around the sides and filling up the tub itself with a mix of garden soil (prepackaged), peat moss, composted leaves, etc. In this I planted a Rodgersia and Astilboides. I want to see which one does the best. So far, it's the Rodgersia. The Astilboides is hanging in there, but is experiencing more transplant shock than the Rodgersia. The rain this week and helped a lot of things along, and the garden looks much revived for it. Good luck, OKC1. Keep me posted on how your son's garden is doing. Susan