Last year, the pond builder took me to beautiful Lake Louise for my birthday and I ended up with 26 stitches due to a horse riding accident. This year the pond builder gave me some beautiful koi – fishes are better than stitches. The beautiful koi from Mystic Koi, Upland, California flew in today via…
Tag: koi pond
The pond builder is too tired to watch fireworks
The pond builder is exhausted. This weekend he toiled under the hot sun around the lower pond. I can hear the local fireworks outside, but the pond builder is falling asleep. You might be wondering why we’re working outside all the time but it really is our hobby. We enjoy puttering around the yard and…
Sod is our friend
Just over a week ago, we had barely finished the lower pond area to be somewhat presentable to our guests. Lots of dirt areas covered with mulch, some areas just dirt and rocks, but in general it was okay. This weekend we tackled the landscaping and while it’s not finished, we’re quite pleased by the…
How much should I feed my koi?
Feeding the koi is always a concern since you want big, fat koi and in Minnesota the growing time is somewhat limited due to temperature. Over the weekend we talked a lot about feeding and Michael Hernandez of Tomigai koi food recommended to us – 2% of the koi body weight. While we have warm…
What a difference 9 days can make…Mr. Pond Builder is on a roll
The lower pond build site is not the most attractive part of the yard but I’m excited to report that the lower pond is almost ready to be home for the koi that are still in the garage. We’re thinking they should be out here before the weekend. Summer has turned on over night so…
Spring morning in Minnesota
Winter seems really long in Minnesota. Spring seems to turn everything green overnight and the plants come back to life pretty quickly. We’re still in the middle of opening up our ponds. The upper pond filtration equipment is being redone and the koi might come out of the garage this week. The lower pond re-do…
Summer is over :-(
It’s Fall now and I feel I have missed a great deal of the beautiful Minnesota summer this year. I certainly have been a little behind in posting, so I’m going to play catch up. Mostly photos but read the captions… First up is a video of the koi taken about a week ago. All…
Cleaning up the Lower Pond
Our lower pond has been taken over by string algae! The algae had gotten so thick it was clogging up the bottom drain. The pond digger decided that drastic action needed to be taken and he drained the pond. Over ten hours, he thoroughly scrubbed the walls of string algae. While the pond was being…
Konishi Karashigoi !!
They’re finally here – Konishi karashigoi! Tony, the pond digger, watched a little video two years ago about the Konishi karashigoi that grow to be 400 pounds. He increased the depth of the pond and changed up many filtration features to grow his “little porpoises.” Last year, Tony talked to Kevin Pham of Genki Nishikigoi,…
Sunday gardening
Another pleasant day outside working on smaller garden projects. So far this weekend, the pond digger has redone a portion of the fence sections, cleaned up/recycled old pond liner, cleaned up the wood scrap pile, spread at least 15 bags of pea gravel, replanted a number of plants for me and made a grape vine…
“Do you have a picture of this?”
It’s not even July 1 and our major pond structures and landscaping are done. It’s actually unsettling to have all this time to do more bike riding, hang around, relax more…the pond digger is having a little work withdrawal symptoms. However, I can not say enough about our contractor. He promised us a July finish…
Another missing koi :-(
Actually two more missing koi! At lunchtime we were sitting by the pond and noticed that Dale was missing. Once again a search of the RDF and nothing. Tonight we looked in the pond and realized that Jet Li is also missing. The pond digger tried blowing the TPRs harder but the little guys were…
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