Hi Jason, Great questions. I believe that with a minimal fish load and lots of plants and water movement, clear water is certainly possible. Be prepared to deal with a spring algae bloom - easy to do with a pre filter of quilt batting or batting the water from your weir can flow thru. I change it as needed thru the algae bloom and then don't need it for the rest of the summer. You'll also need to have a plan for the goldfish offspring. With all that anacharis they will have lots of places to hide and goldfish reproduce at an amazing rate. (I had 3 goldies I thought were too young produce 28 babies in 3 months) The fry will need to be removed to prevent overloading your pond. I feed my fish sparingly, just when I want to see them. It helps keep the excess nutrients (uneaten food) down, and mine certainly have lots of other stuff to eat. My ponds are small (300 and 250 gallons) compared to yours. This is just my experience, I'm sure others will chime in to give you better answers! Happy ponding! S

I have a spot which sounds very similar to yours, without the woods behind. The mower marks, poor grass growing, weeds, puddles of water, & the consistent wetness are/were exactly the same. In my case it was a man-made depression to handle run-off from 6 houses in my subdivision to a large drain located in the corner of my back yard. There is a 2nd drain just outside my property by a few inches on the other side for the houses on that side to drain into. My yard is quite sloped side to side and front to back with a bit of extra dropoff just before the drain area. There was no possibility of raising the elevation or using the lasagna method. Here's what we did. We left the lowest part alone, except for digging out a bit here and there to direct the flow a bit. We added some gravel, some 2 inch egg rock, and a few semi-big rocks to make it more attractive, making a sort of dry creek, which isn't all that dry. This rock/gravel area also serves as a pathway through the area when it's dry enough. We added a couple of smaller sideways gravel paths so we can get in and work in the area as well. These don't actually handle water, but they look like they could & we tried to keep them as natural looking as possible by meandering the paths a bit and putting rocks at strategic points. We also have a few areas where we use large flat rocks for crossing. Any green stuff that intrudes into this area is cleared out by using Round-up once or twice a year. This area is a really small portion of the whole & we tried to keep it as small as possible (narrow paths etc.) & quite simple (Round-up) because rock hauling & weed removal from rocks is for people much younger than us! In the rest of the area we used a modified lasagna method. We used newspapers (6-8 pages dampened) and put down over it a small layer of dirt, mixed with bagged Humus and Manure, and covered it with a 2 inch layer of mulch, trying hard not to raise the elevation more than a little bit & start a war with our neighbors (all at a slightly higher elevation than us & them wanting to keep it like that). We did the work in the fall and let it go for the season. It looked neat and needed no more mowing, with only a moderate leaf cleanup off the rocks (pushed onto the mulched areas). Over the winter I developed a plan to add shrubs to the area, checking books & catalogs for things that can tolerate both wet and clay. I decided to plant only small bareroot shrubs, 12, 18, 24 inches tall, because I had no faith in anything actually being able to live in this spot. I settled on Variegated Red Twig dogwood which I bought locally as small shrubs & Itea, Clethra, a cutleaf Sambucus, & Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) that I bought as whips through a catalog. In addition, I purchased a couple of Emerald Arborvitae shrubs locally for some Evergreen color near the back center of the garden on higher ground. I also bought inexpensive (no cultivar name) starts of things like Ostrich Fern, water Iris, & Cardinal flower from a catalog and added a few plants from the pond section of the local nursery, plus moved a few astilbes (that I didn't like the color of) from another part of the garden. To my surprise most everything took quite well. Since that time (more than 5 years ago) I have tried different shrubs and perennials, pulled out a lot of things that got too big too fast, & had a great deal of fun with my "wet" garden. I have no idea if it would ever have qualified as a bog or a fen - but it was certainly wet enough. I have found that a lot of things will grow in the area and on the edges of the area. It never has to be mowed, there aren't any mower ruts anymore, it doesn't need watering, there isn't even much standing water anymore, and it's quite lovely. BTW, local landscapers, 5 of them, had been brought in to look at the yard during the summer before we did this work - none would give us an estimate (no way to get heavy equipment into the yard) and only wanted to plant River Birches or Bald Cypress trees in the corners. They said nothing else would work. A wee bit big for my small suburban lot & wouldn't my neighbors have loved the tree branches spreading all over their yards! I'm glad we did it ourselves. There are really just so many things that love this area. Here's a few: You can't tell from the picture but behind the Lady's Mantles (themselves 2 ft tall) is a dropoff and a big drain right in front of the yellow zinnias, which are further away than they look in the picture. To the left on the top ridge of the bed is Miscanthus sinensis Strictus and to the left Hibiscus moscheutos Sweet Caroline, both huge tall plants, blocking the view into the "wet" garden, except for this peek. Behind them are various water/damp loving perennials & some small shrubs, with a mixed row of damp & clay tolerant shrubs behind them along the fence. Here's the rest of the Strictus grass and Lysimachia Alexander. The entry path to the "wet" garden is just on the left of Alexander. On the left side of this narrow path is a dwarf Meadowsweet, about the same size as Alexander on its own little island. There is another path to the left of it going the other direction to higher ground. You can also see a bit of the Ostrich fern which is actually about 5 ft back and on the far edge of the drainage ditch. Trollius, an early bloomer likes damp. The dark shrubs in the background are Physocarpus Diablo on the higher back ridge, not quite filled out yet this early in spring. Bowles Golden Sedge looks great against the Diablo foliage. Japanese Primrose (Crimson Strain) sprinkled here and there in the area. Love the color. Virginia Bluebells, one of my favorite spring ephemerals. This runs along the fence side of the bed, before the Swamp Hibiscus is even out of the ground.

Another question I came here looking for ... definitions of onion terms ... what is a seed, seedling, set, bulb, bunch, transplant, scapes, other words I don't know ? I never did find any onion seeds last year (only found seeds for what I call scallions or green onions - White Lisbon Bunching). Our local farm supply store got in bushel baskets of what looks like little miniature onions about the size of the first joint of my thumb that we could buy by the pound. I don't think they had the variety name on them, just red, yellow, and white. I am intermediate day area, so I assume they got the right ones in for our area. A few of them had shoots of green already growing from them about 1-2" long, but the guy there said not to get those. Get the ones with no green yet. I bought about 30. I am trying to do a search of how to plant them, but I don't even know what they are called. So more suggested questions ... How, when, how deep do I plant & care for each of the ways of planting onions defined above ? Water ? Fertilize ? Soak seeds ? I think I read something about cutting the tops back periodically ? When & how to harvest ? Really really really newbie questions for the FAQs. I guess the same kind of questions for garlic though I am many months off from growing that yet. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/allium/msg071138544149.html http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/allium/msg011153119044.html http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/allium/msg0310064812977.html

Reposting to bump to top of page: Posted by ajsblu_eyes 8 (My Page) on Wed, Mar 16, 11 at 19:29 I am reposting the FAQ (use the link below) for AJ....DO NOT REPLY TO THIS POST!! We want to keep this at the top of the message list! Here is a link that might be useful: Link to original FAQ