Today I’m going to take you through my summer project. This year it was starting up an extremely low maintenance plant pond that I set up, pretty much forgot about for 3 months and came back to find a ton of new plants valued at over 700 dollars. I think you’re really going to like this one, so let’s go back in time and start the build.

 

     So in about the middle of May which here on the west coast is close to the beginning of summer, I decided to try growing plants outside as a way of increasing my overall plant collection. I wanted this project to be super low maintenance and I didn’t want to spend hardly any money to start it up. For the pond its self, I picked out a plastic 10 dollar kids pool. I then grabbed a left over bag of soil, some extremely cheap cement sand for the cap and I found some an old flexible vegetable terrace along with some garden netting to serve as a cover.Placement of your pond is really important, especially if you live in a place that has a really hot summer. Luckily for me, I live in a place where the summer is pretty mild, only really gets to 95 F and hotter for a few days. Most of the time the sky is clear and the temp ranges from 75 to 85 F.

 

     I positioned the pond on my back deck in a location that receives strong daylight from about 10 am to 3 pm, the rest of the time being fairly shaded by the fence and house on the other side. I tried to avoid intense sunlight that would last all day long in fear of plants being over loaded, and you’ll see later that I guessed pretty good here. I used only enough soil to completely cover the bottom of the pool with no more than half an inch of soil. I felt there was no reason to go crazy here or even make this the recommended 1 and a half to two inches you’d use on a standard planted tank. I then capped with about an inch of sand all the way around. I picked sand because I thought I might be in and out of this thing frequently so the easy of replanting was considered.  Then I filled the pool pond up with water straight from the tap. I was thinking about adding some feeder fish to the pond, but after discovering the 20 degree plus temperature swing between hot days and cold nights I decided against it. For a while I had this sponge filter in the middle preparing for fish and to promote some circulation. I eventually got rid of it to make more room for plants which was the goal anyway.

 

     Now it was time to plant, this was the part that was more or less the experiment. I had an idea of what plants would work out well but wasn’t 100 % sure. I didn’t buy any new plants for this project, I just used a few I have laying around without a good home. So the planting began. First was dwarf sag, starting with only 3 plants. Next was Ludwigia palustrous, about 20 stems from a tank inside. I had one jungle val that didn’t have anywhere else to be so I threw it in. also tried a few Crypts wendtii’s 2 two small amazon swords and some Hygrophila angustifilia.  Not shown was the addition of some java moss, and a couple stems of and Last, a handful of water sprite and that would do it.  When that was all done, I covered the pond with the lattice and wrapped the black netting around the top. The primary reason for this was not shade, but protection from any animals of the night that may be looking for some food.

 

      I then left the plant pond alone, checking up on it pretty regularly for the next few days. I could tell there was a lot of melt going on with pretty much all of the plant and after a week and a half with no noticeable activity, I though the pond may have been a waste. It was then about a week later, so about 3 weeks after initial set up, I started to notice the ludwigia growing up out of the water, and the dwarf sag propagating. I was excited and felt a lot better about my 15 dollar investment.

 

     All I did was check the pond from week to week and topped it off whenever I noticed the water level drop a few inches. The pond did become quite turbid as time went on, but no water changes were made, again the point was to set it up and leave it. About half way through the summer, roughly 7 weeks in, I got antsy and wanted to set up a new tank. I decided to give some of the pond plants a try and see how they would react being transplanted back into a regular aquarium conditions. I harvested 40 dwarf sag and about 20 stems of ludwigia placing them in to the 40 gallon breeder you’ve been seeing is recent videos.

 

      At first, the plants did go through a little shock as one would expect, but no real melting was experienced with these plants due to their hardy nature. It only took a few days for both of these plants to adjust and begin growing strong in their new home.Back in the pond, most of the plants I put in did not do well. The Cryps melted completely and never recovered as well as the amazon swords. The java moss become covered in algae and the Hygrophila only grew leaves emersed and really didn’t do much. However the jungle val did surprise me. Right away all of the long leaves melted, by the mother plant did start to send off runners eventually creating several plants all of which stayed very low and under the water column.

 

      So again the point of the cover was not really shade but protection from anything that may want to get in and search the pond for a meal. It was black and did shade the plants slightly which may be something you want to do even more in your setup gets an overwhelming amount of light. So I did end up accidentally leaving the cover off for a few nights and came out one morning to have my coffee and found out the pond had been infiltrated, my guess it was some raccoons, but who knows. Many of the plants had been up rooted, but none of the vegetation looked damaged so I didn’t do anything as far as re planting goes. Pond security should me a priority especially if you’re going to keep fish!

 

     But with this happening at the being beginning of September I decided to harvest the pond and shut it down. With the fall weather approaching I knew it was only a matter of time before the plants would slow down anyway.

I drained the pond almost completely and began to up root and separate the runners of all the dwarf sag and jungle val. I also cut off all the good looking stems of ludwigia, something I should have done first with the pond still full.

 

     I then took the plants in side and separated them in to their own tubs and began to count and prepare them for a normal tank. The ludwigia was simple, just cutting some decent sised stems and removing a few bottom leaves for easy re planting. The say and jungle val took a little more time, having to snip off connecting tissue between runners.

 

      When it was all said and done, I ended up with total of 131 dwarf sag, 49 jungle vals, and 52 healthy stems of ludwigia. That’s a net gain of 128, 48 and 32 respectively. If you were to value each dwarf sag at 4, jungle val at 3 an 3-5 stems of ludwigia at 4 then the potential profit gain from this summer project is around $770 dollars and that’s subtracting the 15 or so dollars I spent on the initial set up.   

 

     Overall, I think setting up a plant grow out pond is totally worth it, as long as you select plants that can take the adverse and extreme conditions your summer months may bring. Hopefully from this example you have at least a starting point. Next summer ill definitely be doing this again but on a much larger scale and will be sure to document it for you.