landscaping chores

I really do like gardening and picking out plants – I’m just not into the maintenance aspect. It always seems that as fast as I get one garden area weeded, another one has gone wild! I have a few more weeks of relatively warm weather before winter comes back. I’m cutting back many of the…

A new feeding deck

While I always liked the curved wooden boards on the north side of the pond, the two level path looked odd. So we decided to create a larger ground level deck in the area. The pond digger worked some long hours in the hot sun on this project. There were some evenings that he was…

Pond Maintenance

We have a pretty full month of entertaining at home ahead of us and pond maintenance will be a priority. By the end of the summer, I might have the landscaping done. I have some plants that have been in their nursery pots for weeks now. Some of my evergreens (like the mugo pines) took…

a better day…

The pond digger has been busy with the equipment pit for the lower pond. Once again we didn’t completely finish the waterfall rocks but a lot of them have been placed and we have a plan to redo the path. The lower garden now has some weedblock and mulch which makes it look much nicer….

It’s 11:30 pm – do you know where your pond digger is?

In my case, the pond digger is quite devoted to getting the job done right and working until everything is done. Even if it’s 11:30 pm. This fanatical devotion to ensuring the water quality of the pond is also giving him some carpal tunnel problems (luckily we have a good chiropractor, we’ll be seeing Dr….

Making progress

Thank goodness it stays light in Minnesota until 9:30 or so in the summer. My pond digger has time to work on the pond a little bit after dinner. Tonight’s project was to shore up the walls of the equipment pit. Over the weekend he dug it back and poured some concrete to stabilize the…

Landscaping Challenges

The new equipment certainly keeps the ponds much cleaner and appear to be easier to maintain. However, they do take a larger footprint and landscaping around them is a little more difficult. The rotary drum filter does a good job of pulling out the muck and the muck needs to go somewhere… Building a deck…

UV

    Unlike Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street, our ponds find it pretty easy to be green. We’re a little tired waiting for the natural balance of the pond to kick in and the summer sun is just making it very difficult to keep the algae away. So the pond digger purchased some UV…

Do not text and pond build at the same time

The pond digger was ready to start arranging rocks around the upper pond. Between adding concrete, backfilling with dirt and getting everything ready to place the large riverjacks….he got a text message. Since it was quite sunny and hot this morning, he stepped away from the edge of the pond and into the shade to…

What a difference 15 hours makes!

Yesterday the pond was still a thick pea green soup (which the koi seem to love). The green pond is caused by an algae explosion and millions of little algae cells floating around. Today, the algae is gone. The water is not clear yet, it looks like dusty water when you first start the pond….

Working on a koi pond is kind of messy

Two weeks since I last posted; the pond digger says I’m slacking off. I actually do have a life outside of koi keeping that keeps me pretty busy. We have a kitchen renovation that started seven weeks ago and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course my house is dusty, things…

Koi in the Upper Pond :-)

The pond digger is exhausted – too tired to even watch Game of Thrones. A lot of things were put together and the moving bed filter was created. It’s a little tight in the equipment hole but he made it all work. We’ve been filling the pond for about two days now…and of course patience…