Getting closer to nature

"Isn't nature wonderful?" Pammy said as she looked at this image, below.

What is it? It's the seedpod of a native water plant, nardoo,
when viewed through the microscope she bought for me.
And she's right, viewed from far away or up close, from any
angle at all, nature is endlessly fascinating.

Pop a parsley seed under the microscope and it's very easy to
see why this tough looking customer takes three or four weeks
to soften up so it's ready to germinate.

Here's that nardoo seedpod sitting on a slide.

The microscope itself is nothing flash, just a
reasonable quality kids' beginner model. And
the camera used to snap the pix is just my
little pocket-sized Ricoh CX2 digital. 

While I was having fun yesterday afternoon looking at all sorts of seeds up close, it did occur to me that one of the best ways to get children to fall in love in nature is to show nature to them up close, via a microscope. Even a smear of water from a puddle put on a slide will reveal a new micro-world of wriggling living things it's hard to image could exist. And seeds are such hugely variable and easy-to-gather subjects for a beginner on the microscope.

Back to the original photo, of the nardoo pod, I should just fill you in on what we are looking at, close-up. Pictured below is the pond that is home to our now four-year-old goldfish, Paul, where his watery home is topped by the floating fern, nardoo, and a growing forest of Louisiana iris plants.

The nardoo is called a 'floating fern' as that is
what it does on our inland waterways.

Pammy noticed yesterday that it was setting lots of seedpods,
and brought me some to look at. (Forgive the wire cage, but
it's over part of the pond to discourage that persistent predator
of Paul, known as Pussyus cattus.)

The nardoo seedpods are quite small, and a bit hairy, too.

Split one open and it seems like you are looking at its tiny seed.

Pop the pod under the microscope and there's another layer
of activity going on. At the bottom left it looks like the mini-pod,
with the wide open mouth, has disgorged its seed, while in the
centre of the image the mini pods' mouths are still closed
tightly around what looks like the real seed. I'm just guessing
this is so, but seeing such detail reminds me that what I see
with my unaided eye might not be the whole picture at all.

This might look like a photo taken by a space explorer vehicle
of the close-up of a distant moon's frosty surface, but it is in
fact the seed of a chilli pepper.

Pammy's gift of that microscope a few years ago was an inspired choice, as she knows that the "amateur" part of my Garden Amateur name has nothing to do with commerce, and everything to do with my secret life as an amateur scientist and backyard naturalist. Thank you Pammy, and thank you Mother Nature!

Floating an idea

I had one of those Homer Simpson "D'oh" moments recently, when I saw a plant in another garden growing as it should grow, unlike my version of the same plant. It was in a pond that I saw some Nardoo (Marsilea drummondii), our native floating fern, doing what it should do. Float. On the water. It's a simple game. Float on water = floating fern. Trouble was, my floating fern didn't float. It kind of hovered over the water. D'oh!

Problem solved, here is my nardoo, floating on the goldfish pond like it should.

And here is nardoo doing it all wrong a month or so ago. The problem was simple. I had not put the pot deep enough underwater. That's all. The pot was sitting on a brick, with the top of the pot about 2-3 inches below water level. Wrong! I took out the brick, sank the pot to the bottom, so it was 6 or more inches below the water level, cut off all the foliage, and started again.

While it was a bit of an anxious wait to see whether my drastic action worked, it took only four weeks for the first new leaves to float into position, just like they should have all along. But now all is well with the world, the fish seem to like their new floaty cover, and I've learned something.

And so the moral of the story is to be a gardening stickybeak – you might just learn something useful. Now, I'm sure many blog-readers from around the world won't be familiar with the word 'stickybeak' but it's a fine old Australian term that's fairly close to the English 'Nosy Parker'.

In its worst sense a stickybeak is someone who pries into others' lives, but in the grand sense of the word it just describes what we all can't resist doing: having a look at something, whether or not it's often over a fence, through a fence, or from a vantage point.

Stickybeak often = get a life.

Stickybeak occasionally = national pastime.

And that's what I was doing, walking around the local area stickybeaking at others' front gardens, and in one I saw the nardoo floating serenely, just as it should. That ended my stroll in fact. Headed for home, 'fixed' the nardoo problem then and there. Good, productive, stickybeaking stroll, that one.

Goldilocks rain

It began as all good Goldilocks rain should. Early in the morning, before sun-up. We could hear it on the roof. Then it had its moments, falling ubundantly for a little while, without causing any problems. And then the sun came out. Goldilocks rain – not too little, not too much, just right, with sunshine soon after.

To qualify as a Goldilocks-pleaser, there'd have to be sunshine lighting droplets on pretty plants like this floating native water fern, nardoo.

And for another thing it would be heavy enough to thoroughly wash all the foliage, too. I'm sure that nature isn't meant to have jets, cars and diesel trucks throwing soot into the air, so all the gunk and grime of the city needs to be washed away for plants to be happy and breathe freely. At least that's what I think.

These poppies have just been fed, and so truly A-Grade Golidlocks rain falls the day after you have fertilised some plants, and they just start to grow like crazy when that happens.

Of course a bit of rain does knock over some floppy-leafed people for a short while, but it doesn't bash them up. This little moisture-loving lettuce leaf is probably giggling with pleasure about the rain this morning.

Out at the rain gauge the reading was excellent, a classic Goldy number. 8mm. That's one-third of an inch or about 30pts on the other scale. Definitely enough rain to soak into the soil, but not enough rain to wash seeds away or hurt any delicate petals.

We can't get the rain we want when we want it (ie, 10mm every Tuesday and Thursday nights, between 3am and 5am), as that would make things far too easy. But there's no reason why we can't get the occasional dose of pure Goldilocks rain in between the drizzle, the downpours and the droughts.

This morning, I loved your work, Huey!

Raindrops

Beggars definitely cannot be choosers, and as a gardener who only recently begged Huey for a bit more rain I can hardly complain that he/she has left the tap running. Our average rainfall for February is 117mm; it's Feb 8 and already we have had 141mm. Hardly a deluge, but it's plenty. This morning there was a gap in the rain and it all looked so pretty that I whipped out the camera and came back with some snaps a few minutes later, because it had started raining again.

The berries on my curry leaf tree are turning black, and I really should get out there and remove them all, as these trees are gaining a reputation as a weed. Birds eat the berries, fly a few kilometres and while in some native bushland, leave a berry behind as birds naturally do. But right now it's too wet to harvest berries, and besides, they look so pretty.

The native floating fern called nardoo, which is thriving in my potted water garden, holds onto raindrops in much the same way as nasturtiums do – as if each droplet is a little pearl.

My goldfish, John, Paul and George don't care much about the rain, but I do worry a bit when the water level in the pot gets right up to rim-level (they're frisky little fellers), and so I bail out a couple of inches of water each morning.

Most people understandably think of succulents as dry-climate, waterwise plants, but these are often at their prettiest when wet. This is Agave attenuata.

And I'm not exactly sure what this person is. I suspect it's a 'graptoveria' but it could be an echeveria, maybe a graptopetalum. Frankly, I don't really have a clue, but its light blue colouring looks lovely in the wet morning light.

The potted cumquat tree is covered in white, gently fragrant flowers and green baby fruits, not to mention glossy green leaves. And raindrops.

The soil's getting the good soaking it badly needs, I've enjoyed a weekend of rest because there's nothing to do out in the garden, and all the plants are loving the deep drink. If anyone up in heaven reads blogs, please remind Huey to turn off the tap over Sydney. We've had our fill, thanks, but surely there's somewhere else which is bone dry and needs a good drink right now.

Potted water gardens, an update

Late last year I somehow managed to talk myself into starting up a little potted water garden, and the good news is that it's all progressing pretty well, but I've learned a few lessons along the way, of course, as all newbies do. And that's what this little blog posting is all about.

The peaceful scene this morning. Of the four original goldfish – John, Paul, George and Ringo – three have survived (Ringo, alas, didn't survive a scorching 40°C day fairly early on in the piece). The plants have grown like crazy, and I have learned that potted water gardens are a lot of work. I don't mind the work at all, but that's the main lesson learned. To keep the water clean, you have to both top it up and replace it very regularly.

At first I thought the Louisiana iris wouldn't make it, as the leaves flopped over and showed some signs of yellowing, but to my surprise the main stem has popped up a sturdy, dark green new bunch of erect leaves, and for good measure a second healthy stem has emerged. So I presume it suffered a bit of transplant shock when I repotted it, but now likes the manure-rich soil in which it's growing.

The other planting, a native floating fern called nardoo, is thriving to the point that I have to cut it back weekly to stop it taking over the whole pond. I love this delicate looking monster. This one plant in a six-inch pot could easily cover a water surface three or four times as big as my puny pond.

If you look closely at this shot you can see the underwater roots of the nardoo looking to spread out and take over the world. The goldfish also love the nardoo, as it gives them a great hiding spot to dart to the moment they sense any movement above the water.

The main issue with the pond is maintaining water quality, and as I don't have a pump with a filter (no space to fit one in) I have adopted a simple program of replacing about one-third of all the water roughly every 10 days.

To do this, I first fill a bucket with tap water and sit that out in the sun all day, to 'burn off' any chlorine present in the water (goldfish are said to be susceptible to chlorine, say all the experts). Then in the late afternoon or early evening, I let the water in the bucket cool fully, and use it to replace the pond water. I use a small 500ml plastic measuring jug to remove the water bit by bit, and once the water level is down by about a third, I wipe any green slime off the side of the iris's pot, as well as the pond pot itself. Then I replace the water using the bucket water. This has all become an easy routine, but it is essential maintenance.

During the hot weather of summer, however, the pond's water level sinks an inch or so each day, and so I just top that up with ordinary tap water without worrying about burning off the chlorine in the sun, etc. Adding one litre of tapwater at a time doesn't seem to bother the goldfish at all.

When I was in the supermarket buying the small plastic measuring jug that I use to gently add or remove water from the pond, I also picked up a cheap tea strainer, and this has proved a useful little 'scoop' to clean any bits of flotsam and jetsam from the water.

The reason for all this fiddly maintenance is sunshine. To stay healthy, goldfish need about half of the water surface to be bathed in sunshine, and the other half covered in something cool, protective and green (like the nardoo). When the sunshine hits the water, algae forms. If the whole of the water surface was covered in plant life, there'd be little or no algae, as algae needs sunshine to grow. But as I wanted goldfish (to eat any mosquito larvae) I had to accept algae as part of the deal.

Another serious promoter of algae is me. Well, to be more specific, the problem is me overfeeding the fish. These 'Comet' goldfish are really cute when you sprinkle the goldfish food over the water, going into a very greedy and entertaining feeding frenzy. And so early on I overfed them. Cheap thrills. Then I discovered the 'food block'. This is the white thing you can see in the pond. It's shaped like a seashell, and it's like a slow-release goldfish food. It's a much better way to feed them (great if you go away on holidays of course), and it also contains a few slow-release elements which help to clear up the water quality. Since I've started to use the food block, the water quality has improved and it doesn't need quite as much maintenance as early on.

And finally, the pond has given Pammy a whole new class of ornamental creatures to shop for. This is her latest purchase from our Darwin holiday, a cute little turtle that sits at the base of our pond.

And so the main thing I have learned is that if you take on a potted water garden you've taken on a fair bit of extra work – they're not low-maintenance by any means. I'm loving the whole experience so I'd encourage anyone interested to give it a go. I'm thinking of swapping over to a much bigger pot at some stage in the future, just to give the nardoo a more natural looking wide, shallowish pond of water to float on, but that's about the only change I have in mind at this stage. I guess when I get around to doing that, another update might be in order.

Potting up a water garden

Three weeks ago I had no intention of setting up a potted water garden. And now I have one. Sometimes things work out that way – everything firmly out of control here in my little patch.

My neighbour across the road, Gino, is moving house, and he came to my door three weeks ago and offered me a set of four nice, empty, blue-glazed pots at bargain prices. I already owned a couple of pots in the identical shape and glaze, so the deal was easily done. The largest pot in the set had no hole in the bottom, and that's where this whole potted water garden thing got started. It's the obvious thing to do with such a pot. It has taken three weeks to figure it all out to my satisfaction, and if you're interested in a marathon 19-photo blog entry on how to set up a water garden in a pot, written by a complete newbie to the art, this is what lies ahead on this page. If it's not your thing, I understand completely.

OK, let's begin at the end. Here it is, photo taken half an hour ago. All set up. Tall thing at the back is a Louisiana iris (it will have deep blue flowers one of these days) while the greenery in front comprises two plants: nardoo, a native floating fern, and azolla, an aquatic weed (I'll explain later). Though you can't see them, goldfish are in residence, to eat the mozzie larvae as well as being pets (sort of).

Rewind three weeks. The large glazed pot with no hole in the base. Thank you Gino.

The plants, each ten bucks at Bunnings. Louisiana iris left, nardoo right. As it's not a large pot, I thought that two plants would be all it could take, but the azolla was recommended to me today, and so I bought some.

The nardoo (Marsilea drummondii) is a native floating fern from our inland watwerways. It sits in a pot with the pot about an inch or so completely underwater. The leaves look like four-leaf clovers and it'll spread to cover the water, probably a bit too much for the fish's liking. So I'll occasionally cut it back. It's a popular water plant here not only because it looks nice but also because it's easy for newbies like me to grow.

This is Pot-a-Seal. It's a spray-on internal pot sealant that's recommended for terracotta and other porous surfaces. If a ceramic glaze has no flaws you don't need to spray your pot with it. But I figure that Gino bought his pots from the same 'Pots Seconds' shop nearby where I bought my blue-glazed pots, and I suspect they're seconds because of some kind of fault, perhaps in the glaze. After spraying the inside of the pot with this stuff, it dries in an hour, then you can fill the pot with water, so it's a good precaution to take.

Here's a handy tip. Make sure the pot is level before filling it with water. It looks so much nicer when the water is the same distance from the rim on all sides.

As a test run I set up the nardoo and iris still in the plastic pots they came in from the shop. The top of the iris pot needs to be out of the water (say, one-third out, two-thirds immersed). The nardoo is completely submerged. It took about a day for the nardoo to tidy itself up and spread out nicely, so don't worry if it looks a bit ordinary on day one.

The trouble with the temporary arrangements is that they looked terrible. Nardoo on a house brick, the iris on a brick and then some pavers to get to the right height. A much better set up was needed.

Then, to reinforce the point about a better set-up being needed, two days later we had a day of torrential rain which turned the iris into a wreck. OK, lesson number two learned: windy days were going to be a problem for tall plants in light plastic pots.

And here's the solution. A tall glazed pot (again from Bunnings, just $10) that sits inside the water pot, with its rim an inch and a half out of the water. My plan is to fill the bottom four or so inches of the water pot with pebbles to hold the tall iris pot securely. And that meant repotting the iris...

Thank goodness for Google! It seems that watery irises such as Louisiana irises and Japanese irises love acid soils. The ideal potting mix for them is a 50:50 blend of acid garden soil and well-rotted cow manure (apparently the most acid of the farmyard manures). Garden soil is needed as it holds together well in a pot in water. Potting mix is hopeless, apparently. My garden soil is acid, too acid in fact (I'm working on it), but at around pH 5.5 it's ideal for irises. So making up the potting mix was very easy – I only needed half a shovel full of soil to do the job.

I already had a bag of cow poo on hand, as I use it in my garden on my vegies and as a light mulch to gently feed various potted plants. It is a wonderful plant food. The procedure for potting up the iris was to fill the bottom of the pot with several inches of pebbles (I used a layer of large pebbles in the bottom, topped with a layer of finer gravel, the same stuff you can see on the top of the potted-up iris a couple of pix earlier). Then I added several inches of the soil/manure mix on top of the gravel, planted the iris rhizome into this, and topped all that with an inch and a bit of more fine gravel (which stops the soil mix floating away).

Around the base of the iris pot I decided that black pebbles would add a sense of depth to the look of the water pot, and so this is what lines the bottom four inches of the pot.

I removed a fair bit of the water from the pot to get the iris pot secure, then topped up the water after that. (By the way, from my Googling I've learned that watery iris such as the Louisiana and Japanese iris are really plants of the water's edge, not for growing underwater. They prefer the rhizome (ie, root) not to be underwater all the time, but they can cope with the odd flooding episode without any bother. And so that's why you should aim to have the rhizome sitting above the waterline.)

Once I topped up the water I then had to wait a week or so to let the water settle down, before adding the goldfish. This step is important, because tap water contains traces of chlorine, which can kill the fish, but if you sit the water in sunshine for a few days the chlorine 'burns off' and disappears. And so, this morning...

Four Comets, $2.50 each from Marrickville Aquarium shop. The goldfish aren't just there to be pretty. To earn their keep, they will be eating mosquito larvae. Not all goldfish are suitable for water pots outdoors, but Comets are, and so are Koi carp. Everyone recommended Comets to me, and a great tip was not to waste money on buying big ones. As a newbie, my first attempt at goldfish may or may not work, so at $2.50 a pop the price is right.

Here's an important step in releasing goldfish into a water pot or pond. Leave them in the bag of water in which you brought them home from the shop. Open the bag to let in oxygen, then place the whole bag still holding the fish, in the pond water. Leave it there for about 20 minutes, during which time the bag water will slowly become the same temperature as the pond water. Apparently goldfish can handle very cold water and also very hot days, but they cannot cope with sudden changes in their water temperature. So ease them slowly into their new home is the kind way to settle them in.

After all that, as soon as they were released they went straight to the bottom and did nothing. Oh no! But five minutes later they had got over the shock of being in a watery world with black pebbles on the bottom and plants on top, and they were exploring their new home.

Apart from feeding the fish, my job is to control the spread of the water plants so only half of it is covered with greenery. The goldfish need access to the surface. However, they really appreciate the cover provided by the plants, giving them somewhere to hide when cats and birds spot them. As the pot is over 30cm deep, that depth of water adds to their sense of security. At this stage I thought that was it, but with more Googling and phoning I decided that the goldfish needed some kind of natural food plant to supplement the mozzie larvae and the goldfish flakes, and so...

...I bought some azolla. It's an aquatic weed, but there are several species of azolla, and my water garden shop assured me this is not the one on the banned list (the really bad one has yellow flowers, this one doesn't). This plant has roots attached, doesn't need potting and just sits and spreads on the water surface. Its presence will oxygenate the water, which is good for the goldfish, and also handy at keeping algae away from the pot – and the fish like to eat it, too. Its downside is that it spreads easily, but getting rid of it is as easy as scooping it out by hand. And as I will be regularly feeding the goldish I can't see it getting out of hand as I am a bit of a neato, or so I hear. The main thing when getting rid of the excess is to add it to the compost heap, where it soon dies when away from the soaking water it needs. The alternative is the garbage bin, and the crucial thing is of course to keep it away from drains.

And so to repeat my opening shot, here we are this afternoon with the new water garden on the go.

I'm happy with how it looks, but I am sure that in a month or so an update will be worthwhile in confirming where I went wrong, or did OK. Are the goldfish still alive? Has the azolla taken over? Are we being eaten by mozzies? Are the plants still alive, for that matter. I had never thought water gardens could be so exciting, but thanks to Gino this might be the start of something big!