Turning Pond Muck into Compost

This came up as a question from a friend who wanted to know how I kept the pond clean. The answer, this year, has been a plant filter in the water fall. We do have a filter set up for the large pond, but over the spring the parrot feather got so thick that it seemed to be enough.

Around April I took all the filter matter out of the filter and just let the vortex collect the bigger chunks. Over time, the pond got clearer and stayed clean. Meanwhile, the waterfall was completely full of parrot feather - to the point I started ripping it out in chunks.

As with all garden matter, it went into the compost. A lot of it. More than grass clippings from the lawn.

Then I had an epiphany. The plant was turning all the nutrients and solids in the water into its roots, stems and leaves (ok, i was a little slow on this). The more it grew, the less nutrition was in the water. It basically starved out the algae. To boot, the roots are SO thick that they captured everything that was passing through the falls.

The falls basically became my own little wetlands cleaning the water. AND, the plant is pretty! It certainly makes a nice carpet.

All summer long, I have been cutting the plant out and throwing it into the compost. I haven't had to clean a filter pad a single time all summer. Organic waste to parrot feather to compost to garden to flowers. It's been working perfect.

This week I decided to edit down a video explaining how it works. Enjoy!

Lowe's and I built it together!

I love perrenial sales. I particularly love surprise perrenial sales. Like the one that my local Lowe's sprang on me this Friday. Plants, which were regularly about $10-12 were marked down to $1-2. Now THAT is a sale.

I have no idea why they do this. The common belief is that after they start to wane, the average customer doesn't buy them. Another idea is that they are going to be too heat stressed this time of year to sell. If someone can tell me the "real" reason for this, please do.

I dunno! But they all came home with me. Every single last one that was on the shelf. Every wonder how many plants a Mini Cooper can carry? 9 Black Magic Taro's, 10 cone flowers, 3 hardy hibiscus, 11 hardy canna. That many!

The elephant ears are great. Particularly for the wet area in our lower garden that gets the run-off from the upper garden. I have managed to drown several plants already before I realized how wet the spot really gets.

Now, I am adding true marshy plants to the area. The taro and the hibiscus will go in that spot. But the real find this trip was the echinacea. The ones they cleared out were the sky series. A few years ago, they were new and very expensive. They still arent cheap, but they are commonly available. The patch we planted will spread like crazy, and feed the butterflies and birds well.

So... Thanks to Lowe's, we were able to expand the butterfly garden pretty far for like, 40 bucks. Another trip to Starbucks (cause I love them too) for about 15 pounds of coffee grinds and about 30 dollars in peat moss and soil conditioner (we used all the compost).

Another great step in the master plan to build a huge butterfly garden. I am now stalking the perrenial rack for the next big sale.

Elapsed Garden Time: Combined 13 hours.
Weed-O-Rating: 5 on a scale of 5. Exceptional weekend!