In 2012 I could barely get the floating plants to thrive, but in 2013 when we came back after being gone for a month, this is what greeted us! Complete and total and excessive success. What is the difference? Don't really know but I have two guesses. First, I used a floating island to protect the first few floaters (water lettuce and water hyacinth). Maybe having a safe haven allowed them to quickly propagate rather than having their roots chewed off the moment they started to multiply. Obviously, there are way more plants here than would fit in the island. Second, it is possible that the age of the pond has allowed the right amount of natural balance to provide enough fertilizer to offset the alkaline rocks that line our pond and affect our water.
Summer maintenance included weekly liquid fertilizer added to the pond and barley mixture added to the filter. The UV filter ran all summer and we never had a pea soup algae bloom. Had lots of other types of algae, but not the single cell problem of 2012.
It was a hot dry summer and I left most of the plant cover on the pond for August, even though the books say not to. Everything was thriving so well and the water looked so natural and clean that I wanted to keep it shaded with all the plants.
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