article: Winterizing the Water Garden

Winterizing the Water Garden

You have spent all spring and summer working on your water garden, creating the environment that is both beautiful and functional for the plants and the fish. Caring for your pond before the winter months come into season will be important so that your plants, the fish and the pond itself make it through the winter with out problems or damages.

If you have container plants in or around the water garden, you need to think about the containers that you are growing in. Are the containers the type that can sit out in the weather – freezing and contracting with out the possibility of breaking? If the containers are made out of ceramic or other glass type material, you might find that in the spring your containers could split or cracked and almost useless if you are not careful. Using containers that are made of wood, Styrofoam or other materials like plastic that have a bit of bend in the material that the container is made out of will ensure that you are protecting your plants and your investment through out the year.

Living in an area where the water is going to freeze and freeze deep, you are going to need to pull your pumps and filtration system out of the water garden. Cleaning them thoroughly and putting them in storage in the greenhouse until the spring thaw will ensure that they are going to be in good working order for the next growing season.

Living in a grow zone that does not have difficult or tough weather, where you won’t see frost or frozen water there is not much that you need to do in preparing your water garden for the winter. If you live in a grow zone that receives heavy frosts but no real ice formations on the water garden this is good so that your plants can die and re-grow as the spring seasons come again. The heavy frosts also help control certain pests killing off some larvae and pests on the plants.

As the winter months are approaching you can plant winter hawthorns in the water garden so that they will become established over the winter months and will bloom in the early spring months. The early winter months are also a time to divide and dig up plants that you want to move or take out of your water garden as well.

If you like to grow plants in the water garden and you get ice, over the water in the winter months, you most likely have already ‘checked out’ the types of plants that will survive the cold and you shouldn’t have to do anything with these plants over the winter.

If you are growing some type of tropical plants in your water garden and you do get freezing waters in the pond over the winter you will have to remove these plants as the temperatures start to drop and raise them indoors until the spring months come again. You can also consider putting some type of dome over the pond, similar to that of your greenhouse, so that the water will remain warm and your pond will not freeze.

Using a thermometer in the water garden you will know exactly how cold the water is getting to be and when you should be removing tropical plants, containers that will crack and when your filtration system needs pulled so that they won’t freeze.