The Patio Pond is Coming To Life Again

Our first Spring in our new house (2017) we used an old 400 gallon poly stock tank to create a patio pond. We bought eight feeder goldfish at Walmart. They were about the length of my thumb. We added a “toss and grow” boxed hardy water lily from the farm store and I purchased a few marginal pond plants off a website that I planted in baskets and we arranged on concrete blocks.

A couple of times since then, I have had to separate most of the marginals (which are mostly varieties of aquatic Iris) as they were outgrowing their pots. Two years ago, the lily pads were so prolific, we had to remove about 80% because we couldn’t even see the fishes. Last year the aquatic mint had escaped the pots and took over the surface of the water, so we did a major harvest (it wasn’t as hard as I thought because the roots were not attached to anything.) I dehydrated the mint. I have enough dried mint to make tea for years!
Every winter we keep an aerator running which usually keeps a hole in the top ice. But, when we get really cold weather we hang a tank heater to keep the ice open (mostly for the wild birds.)

In the Spring, when the temperature gets high enough, the fishes start to hang out at the surface more frequently. It’s really amazing how they can survive the winter.
When the temperature remains about 40ish, I begin to feed them again.

The lily pad plant, that’s in a pot on the bottom, survives the winter and sends up its first leaf quite around the time I start feeding the fish again. Now, there are about a half dozen leaves on the surface, and more on their way to the top. Soon, it will send up the first flower. It will bloom all summer long.

If you turn up the sound on the video above, you’ll hear the Purple Martins in the background. They have come back in force. I love hearing their chortling all summer long. The sound of the birds, the bubbling water and the wind chime that hangs above the patio pond makes this space my favorite place to relax.