LifeinPain
When the CG first settled on the type of challenge this quarter I initially thought just a pot for a plant but after a couple of weeks it dawned on me that anything that can contain a plant could mean something much bigger than a pot. When I was 8 years old my dad set up an above ground vinyl 4ft x 8ft wading pool on our patio as a fish pond. I literally spent hours and hours out there fascinated by the fish and ecosystem. Seeking to recreate that feeling I set out to build a pond/water garden again.
Finding a suitable location to dig in my yard proved to be a challenge as my soil is compacted black clay and I have several very large trees with large roots in the yard. But after some false starts I was able to choose the current location. The soil proved to be such a challenge that I had to alter my plans for the depth, I could only dig so deep so about 14 inches. Length is 12 feet, width is 7 feet. Not able to find a hard shell pond of a suitable shape I decided to use a rubber liner with cloth under liner. This requires lots of folding of the liner around the contours. Was able to get the liner folded in and the rock work done over a couple of weeks. The large rock at the end of the pond is a cover for the filter.
Ended up getting two pumps, one for the filter and one for the rock fountain. Fountain is adjusted so water just barely clears the top so it appears more like the water is seeping out than spraying. Hoping that moss and algae ends up covering most of the rock fountain over time. One outstanding trait is the wide shallow ledge just inside the pond which allows a home for many plants. Plus the depth in the center is deep enough for the water lilies.
The plants include 3 different water lilies, taro, arrowhead, reeds, and flowers. Also there are about 20 small 2 to 3 inch bluegill fish to provide something to eat the mosquitoes. Plant placement took about a week for me to experiment with as well as working out some tweaks in the plumbing. Overall project took 6 weeks and a lot of pained muscles, rocks are heavy and digging in the mud sucks. I appreciate the support from people who have stopped in during my streams and posted to my discord.
