1000000 Litre Pond Update - May 2016

Now this video is going to start off with an apology. The last pond update video I did was right at the end of winter and that was supposedly the spring update and nothing was happening. Now since that last video which is only a few short weeks ago everything started to grow around the pond finally. The weather's warmed up and you can see from this fella this is the skunk cabbage. It's gigantic now. In that last video it was only about this tall and it had those beautiful yellow Well the flowers have died back now and now the leaves are coming out huge waxy leaves. The smell of fox pittle is still on them but it's not as bad as when the flowers were out because they were really pungent. Now here we've got some beautiful flower stalks and these are off something called umbrella plant and it likes damp areas it does prefer shade which it ain't getting here but early season it puts out these huge stems with lovely pink flowers Followed by the big waxy leaves that literally look like umbrellas. Pollen that's coming off this grass, unbelievable. Just as well I haven't got hay fever. But this lovely grass here which is flowering is called golden sedge. That's a really nice one and it probably looks at its best early season. And right next to that we've got something called meadow sweet. It's quite an attractive plant and you can probably guess by the name meadow sweet you would normally find it in meadows particularly water meadows near rivers and in the summer that produces a lovely cluster of flowers on long stalks which smell very very sweet and I don't know why but meadow sweet kind of reminds me of medieval things for some reason. Just the smell of it it just I don't know it just kind of transports me back in time. I can't explain it, it's a really strange one, but it's a really sort of heady full sweet smell. Here we've got something called marsh woundwort growing and really I could probably do with getting rid of that because it doesn't produce much in the way of flowers and it's starting to spread all over the banks. Finally got some action down here from purple loosestrife and in the summer that produces beautiful big flowers that are excellent for bees, really pinky purple in colour. There's another golden sedge, that's a nice one. And behind it you can see the iris are actually starting to grow, they're looking good. Just poking through here we've got some typha, this is the huge one, this typha latifolia which is also known as cattail and it gets huge brown pokers in the summer. You can just see the different types of irises I've got here. This is going to produce a beautiful floral display in the summer. Look at them, we've got the big yellow ones here, we've got I think bluey purple ones here, and then we've got a dwarf yellow one here, and just over there we might have more blue ones, so it'll be interesting to see what comes up there. If you eagle-eyed you'll notice a gunnera there. I've planted a lot of gunneras around the side, so I'm hoping that they do well. Now if you remember the last video, I showed you something that was shaped like peni and they were the male parts of the giant horse tails that go around the pond and that's what comes up after the initial flower and they get huge. They can get four or five feet tall, look really prehistoric. Now what you've probably never seen in one of my update videos is this plant behind me here. Looks a little bit like a lily with elongated leaves. This is a plant called water hawthorn and it produces lovely white almost like crocodile mouth shaped flowers and they smell of vanilla and these were put in when I closed my polytunnel down. I had a huge tub full of these so these are planted all the way around the sides. Some of them haven't taken, some of them have. What I'm hoping is they'll produce a load of seeds and they'll totally populate around the sides of the pond. They're like what you would call a deep marginal if you were buying them at a garden center or something. You'd look in the deep marginal section and they'd be there. Ideally they want to be planted under about a foot to 18 inches of water but I have seen them grown in three feet of water. And I can smell vanilla there, it's a lovely lovely smell. If they would totally populate the sides of my pond you'd get a really beautiful smell coming off. And they flower all year, actually in the mid-summer that's when they're looking at the worst. And I've seen those fellas flower through ice, they're a really really nice plant. Now I've got loads of hostas planted around the pond, these are the only ones that are really showing anything so far. And for whatever reason they never get bothered by slugs, they're a nice plant. Quite a few clumps of those around the pond. Now just behind me here in this shaded area of my pond underneath some conifer trees are probably my favorite sort of fern. These are shuttlecock ferns. They grow with a very upright habit. They do look very much like the tail end of a shuttlecock. I assume that's where they got the name from. Definitely one of my favorite ferns. I absolutely love them. Here we've got a couple of different plants to point out. That one's giant marsh marigold. that's flowering at the moment they can get about two and a half to three feet high very nice plant and this one is the flower of something called woodrush and that's really a woodland plant but i've stuck a few around the pond because they do grow well in wet areas as well as dry areas see if i can see the leaves that's it down there and if you're watching one of my recent videos you'll have seen me making a shelter where i actually covered the whole structure With woodrush, and that was in a wood, had nothing to do with ponds, but it created a beautiful carpet effect over the top of my shelter. I'll put the link to that in the video description, because you might want to check it out. Now there's water mint, there's some mimulus and so on, but they're really still pretty small, they're not really worth pointing out. There's variegated grasses coming up. Nothing really much happening apart from what I've shown you. But as you can see, this time I've got a t-shirt on, sun's out and the weather's beautiful. Hopefully that'll encourage my remaining fish to come to the top and if anybody's wondering what this thing is here that looks like a giant beehive, I'll be running through what that is in a future video so look out for that. I'm not going to tell you now, I'll let you work it out. There you go, it's a while since these fellas have been on the pond. My big pump has just kicked into action on the timer behind me there and you can see how well that's oxygenating the water. It's got that Venturi system, so as it's blasting out at 40,000 litres an hour, it's drawing air in and totally bubbling up and fizzing there. And this particular pump is a monster. It's 1.1 kilowatts, 40,000 litres an hour. I don't know what that is in gallons, but it's a hell of a lot. It's heavy on the electric, so I can't really afford to have this on all the time. I have it 15 minutes on, 30 minutes off, 15 minutes on, 30 minutes off, and that just repeats 24-7. So in effect, it's only on a third of the time. but that will still cost me 300 maybe 350 quid a year to run. That's quite a lot of money but it does a cracking job. Obviously it's just a pump it's not going to clear the water but it helps to keep the water healthy. There's a close-up of the venturi. Basically I've just got a bit of hose pipe and I've drilled a hole in the big two inch pipe and shoved the hose pipe in so as So as the water's blasting out, sucking air in, mixing it in with the water. It's creating a current all the way around there. Basically, the current just goes right around the pond and then comes back again. It's like a vortex sort of effect. And if I didn't have all the crayfish and carp digging on in the bottom of the clay pond, it would be pretty clear. Now then, because I've got that huge pump on a timer, I don't really need my other pump, which was an Aquamax 16000. So I'm going to dig that out now and I'm going to put that one to one side and use it as a spare. Well I was wondering where that old rake had gone. That solves that mystery. Nice little hiding place for your son. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Little crayfish house. Nose. Just let that pipe drop back in there because the other end's still attached. If I do ever need to put this old pump in again I'll just grab a hold of one end of the pipe that's still attached and just kind of reel it in and reattach it. That's just heavy with muck. I'll have to take this apart and give it a good clean and then put it into storage. Do you know, I don't miss doing pond work at all. Look at the state of that. That's all got to be cleaned up. That's what's in the bottom of the cage. Just pure filth. And I used to clean stuff out like that day in, day out. In all weathers. And as I say, I don't miss it at all. Not that side of it anyway. I miss the creation side of it. Because starting from nothing, creating something that attracts wildlife or will support fish. And the customer you're doing it for thinks that's absolutely lovely, it's there for years to come, that's a marvellous feeling, but getting in the pond and cleaning out filth isn't a marvellous feeling. So there you go, that's pretty much what the pond is up to at the moment. The fish are definitely more active, I am seeing them, and I've started putting a few traps around the sides just to see what I can trap, just to see what's about, and the results have been pretty good. I have discovered quite a few different types of fish. There we've got a perch in beautiful condition. Look at the colours on that fella. But we've also got a couple of titanic gudgeon. Look at the size of them beggars. That's not as big as they get and I've had bigger ones in the traps, but they get to monstrous proportions in this pond. They seem to love it. There's the other one. Lovely sort of a bluish hue to them. Now this trap normally produces the best. It's the nearest to where the water flow is and today is no exception. Here we've got a beautifully conditioned perch. Look at that fella. Look at the colours on that. Lovely. It's not the biggest in the world, but it's a beautiful colour. Absolutely lovely. But that one pales into insignificance compared to one we caught the other night. Just check this fella out. Nice size rood. Another rood. In breeding condition. And a cat. And a cat. A little stripey. A perch. It's too much of a dream. Are you sure that's going to fit? Mega stripey. with scars off the otter. The otter's mouth's grabbed a hold of it and it's managed to get away. I think he's going to say. Excuse me. What are you doing up there? Oh my god. It's got a branch between his legs. Thanks. That can't be comfortable. Yay! Okay that's the pond. I'll just briefly show you the dam wall because there's a lot of aces starting to come out and it's really starting to colour up. The garden's looking pretty good. Just put a treatment on the lawn. Within a few weeks that'll be emerald green, it'll look really nice, and my son will play football on it and destroy it. Now this isn't a bad set of colours, is it? Tree heathers, which are flowering, and they have a really, really sweet, lovely smell. If you've ever done heather burning, which is putting the strips in on grouse moors, you'll recognise this smell. It almost smells like burning honey, and that's what the moor smells like when you burn it, it's a really nice smell. And that reminds me of the moors. Very, very nice. I love my tree heathers and I really should plant more of them around the pond. If I ever fell some of the trees in the wood, definitely plant up on the bankside a lot of tree heathers, because they're one of the nicest plants you can have in a woodland garden. Of course, here and here, I've got different sorts of acers. They're now in leaf so now on various points around here you've got purples and greens and they grow wild colours in the autumn. Really, really love aces. And if you'll notice there's two different types of tree heathers. We've got the green one and we've got the gold one. Both have lovely smelling flowers. You know when I walk up to the pond you just get that waft of burning honey and it smells lovely. I can't remember whether I showed you this in the last update video so I'll run through it again. Along the side of here is always wet and I was worried about this bankside collapsing onto my path so I planted willow. I basically just plugged willow in all the way along here years ago and for the last few years I've been weaving the willow into itself to make a really knotted retaining wall and that's all coming away really really well. As that comes up it'll push roots into there. And you'd have to pull that out with a JCB. You know, you'd really have to get a digger in there and rip that out. It's going to be so strong. It's going to go pretty mad. And I know it's going to be way up here by the end of the year. But it's going to give me loads of willow to work with. And if you're interested in seeing what I do with the willow, I'll put a couple of links in the video description because I've made a fish trap and I've also made a shelter out of willow as well. So you might be interested in taking a look at those. Now this isn't really pond related but it's in my woodland garden. This is a plant called broom. It's nothing really to look at and it's regarded as a bit of a pest but when it flowers it's absolutely beautiful and it produces little seed pods about two inches long and on really hot days you can hear those cracking all around the wood because I've got quite a lot of broom. Not all of it's flowering though, just the odd bit but it produces lovely So really I'll just take a quick scan along the dam wall. This is the entrance to where the pond is from my lawn and as you can see the acers are in full leaf and absolutely beautiful in colour and just behind that purple acer there we've got something called Pieris forest flame and at this time of year the new growth is absolutely beautiful it literally just looks like flame and that's my contorted hazel. I took out all the straight stems so now Now it's purely just contorted. It takes a little bit of looking after, because if you allow it to revert, it possibly could go back to just being straight. So you've got to chop down all the straight growths that come out of the bottom here. This is the world's worst rhododendron. Year on year, this one has just got worse and worse. I don't know why, but it's practically dead. It's not looking good at all. Although the flowers on it are still beautiful, I feel so sorry for it. It's almost like it's got some pest, because the leaves just don't grow on it at all. And yet the other rhododendrons in the garden are okay. Yeah, about 15 foot away from that last rhododendron. Look what we've got. A huge one. And it won't be long before it's flowering. I'm really looking forward to seeing that one. That'll be a beauty. And just next to that, that nondescript-looking Acer goes bright orange in the autumn. You know, I've never noticed that one before, just along from that other one. We've got another rhododendron. I've got more of these than I thought. I've got more gunnera than I thought as well. We've got one, two, and then the big lad. This is going to be really nice along here when they all grow. Right next to where I parked my car there's a beautiful rhododendron. Half a plant looks like it's dead but it's putting on a good display as far as the flowers go. Let's check these out. The leaves aren't looking too good, looks like there's some sort of pest ravaging it. Now it's said in folklore that foxgloves planted around your house protect it from evil spirits. Now we've got so many foxgloves growing all around our place we must be the most protected house in the region. The devil himself could roll up and have no chance of getting in. Now hopefully you'll be able to see this but here we've got a turkey oak so that yellowy one is an oak tree the purpley one is a copper beech and believe it or not that green thing At the top of the copper beech is the copper beech. The top of this one particular branch, instead of growing purple, it grows bright green and it's done that for years. Same plant, different colour and I cannot work that out for the life of me. So there you go, hope you've enjoyed looking around the pond and around the dam wall. Now I don't want to put out too many update videos because it doesn't really change from week to week but when there's a good change like there was from this one to the last one it's worth making a video. The last thing I want this series to be is just some god-awful v-log where People just end up talking about themselves. I really just want to talk about the garden because that's what interests me. And hopefully that's what interests you as well. I'm merely the fella who films it for you. Here we've got a stray cat that's turned up. We call him Battered Bob because part of his ear is missing. He's a little bit scared of people but he's getting there. He's getting better and we've been regularly feeding him so he's quite happy. Even though he doesn't look it. Actually he's looking a lot better than he was when he first turned up. I think now he's just Bob. He's not too battered. And when he gets all his condition back, he'll be handsome Bob. Won't you, Bob? Come on, son, you can do it. Come on. Come here, Bob.