Pond Update - Spring 2016

Hello again. In this video I'm just going to give you a very quick update on my pond. To be honest, it's a little bit early in the season to be doing an update, but I've been asked by so many people that I'm just going to have a quick fly around. I'll show you what's new, I'll show you what's changed and what hasn't changed. Hopefully you'll enjoy it. Now that area just beyond my van used to be the site of a polytunnel. We're going to rip all that out, put a big concrete base in and I'm going to have a big cabin there to work from because my current cabin that I'm working from is just getting a little bit too small as the business has taken off. So all the plants that were in and around the polytunnel have been going in around the pond, but unfortunately, although it's April already, it's been so cold they've hardly grown. Nevertheless, I'll show you what I've got in. Now some people might recognize this. This is Gunnera and these leaves can get about six feet across. The plant itself can get about 10 feet high and I've put about maybe 10 or 12 of these around the pond. Believe it or not I couldn't give them away. They're a beautiful big architectural plant and nobody would take them. These are a load of various irises which are coming up pretty well but really they should be further on than that. Underneath this big pile of detritus leaves is a huge gunnera. This is one of my existing ones and as you can see it's doing absolutely nothing. Oh, apart from that, there's a little leaf uncurling in there and that's about it. Really, that should be miles further on. There's another couple of gunnera down here. Put one in just here and there's another huge one underneath this big pile of leaves here. Again, they're not doing much. Now, grown on the side of my damn wall is a big bushy plant that's going to expose my ignorance. I really don't know what it's called, but it's coming into flower and it's quite beautiful. Very nice. Now, the fence that goes around my pond is about knackered, so it'll be coming down soon. And in this pile of leaves, we've got some skunk cabbage just starting to poke through. See the yellow flower there? They get huge. It can get like 12, 18 inches long. Absolutely massive, and the leaves can get about two and a half feet, three feet long. That's quite a big skunk cabbage, and it doesn't half smell of fox pittle. It's not a nice smell. Loads more iris coming up. I think they're Japanese water iris. We've got some yellow flag. We've got American iris. We've got some variegated yellow iris. There's all sorts. I think that one might even be a purple one. There's a hell of a range of iris around the pond. Some new, some old. And these fellas here... They're shaped like crooked pennies. They're actually giant horse tail. They come up like that. And then from the sides of these growths, they produce huge big spikes with loads of little leaves coming off. They're a really nice plant. You'll probably see those in some of my earlier pond videos. Just in the centre of the shot there, we've got a terrapin sunning itself in the non-existent sun. And here we've got some skunk cabbage that are a little bit further on. They're a really beautiful plant. They're probably one of my favourite pond plants, or marginal plants as it were. Look at that. Absolutely beautiful. I love them. More skunk cabbage. You can see they've come out the polytunnel. They're still in the pots. I'll wait till they get a little bit bigger then repot them. And all this scraggly stuff here is bog bean. Normally at this time of year you would expect to see that in, in, at the very least in leaf, if not possibly in flower. They're a very early flowerer. But at the minute, it's just a scraggly mess. I'm hoping that'll grow out over the surface and make a lovely raft of plants. That's a Marsh Marigold. They should have been out long before now. And growing round the side of the pond, we've got quite a lot of wild garlic, which is tiny. Really, that should be huge. It should be just about flowering now. And it's nowhere near it. Just see a couple of flowers starting to come up here. Miles behind. Even my grass is looking quite terrible. It's just starting to green up now, it's not the best. But the acers are starting to come into leaf. They've just come out this week. Everything is very, very behind. So this is looking from where my log cabin is, down onto the pond. It's still very, very bare, very bare. Oh, actually, I forgot to point that out. The centre of the shot there, there's quite a nice yellow bamboo. That's doing well, but that is an evergreen. Now, if you watched the previous update video, you might know that there was a floating island. And I was going to anchor that in the middle of the pond here. Unfortunately, when I went to drag it into the side, a lot of the metal cage that was underneath the floating island just disintegrated. And it actually sunk. So it's somewhere down there in about 10 feet of water. And I've got no desire to dig it out again. So I'm just going to continue on without a floating island. If the ducks want to come in, they can nest around the side or up in the wood or something. I'll just have to try and keep the foxes away from them. There's been a cormorant visiting here. I've caught it fishing two or three times. You can get a license to shoot them but this is a very wily one and at the moment there's shoals of fish underneath my big t-shaped pier where the the boathouse is. They're in hiding so something's gonna have to be done. Something swift and permanent. There you go. I feel embarrassed because there's not really that much to show. I've shown you a few plants who are just coming up and that's about it. That's all that's changed from the last update video. Winter's just gone on for so long this year. It's April now and I think it's about five or six degrees Celsius, which is absolutely freezing. Nothing's growing. The fish aren't active. Well, the fish are getting pounded by predators, but they're just not active either. What it needs is just a little bit of warm weather, so the next update hopefully will be sooner rather than later and it'll show a lot more happening. Really the sides of my pond should be greening up by now with plants and there's just nothing happening. So So, hopefully I'll have more to say in the next video. Catch you then.