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Gardening update.
It's been a summer of learning. And most of what I'm learning has to do with how ridiculously intense the Colorado sun is during June & July.
My garden is a wreck in progress. Pak choi, broccoli, & cauliflower have all bolted thoroughly. Green onions are wilting and chard can't seem to recover after getting pummeled flat by hail a few weeks ago. The blueberry bushes look good but the berries are puckered. Alas. The tomatoes are growing like crazy though, & I had my first strawberry yesterday. Peppers also look pretty healthy. Next year, that raised bed will be filled with tomatoes, peppers, & other bona fide sun-lovers only, & the cruciferous crowd will go in a box on the north side of the house. I also might try a later crop of broccoli in September, when the sun has lost some of its fierceness.
The fish pond - oh, the fish pond. I fought a valiant fight there, my friends. But 14 hours a day of unfiltered star radiation has made the algae bloom beyond the control of snails, tilapia, competing plants, shitty filters, & me. The homebrew "filter" I inherited from the previous owners of our house was completely ineffective, so I broke down & paid about $500 for a state-of-the-art Laguna triple filtration system. The new pump & filter should more than double the filtration rate, & will pass the water through a mechanical filter (foam pads that catch gross contamination), a biofilter (lava rocks that incubate colonies of healthy bacteria), & a UV filter (to kill algae, specifically). I got the whole new system set up last night. It looks nice - the waterfall sounds really cheery with the increased water flow rate & I replaced the previous white PVC discharge pipe with a much less noticeable black dishwasher hose. I couldn't see a difference in water quality this morning, but online reviews have said it will probably take a week to clear up the pea-soup conditions. I am also planning to reduce the fish population by giving away a few fish to neighbors who are installing a pond. I think that these changes should finally bring the water quality problems to heel -- if not, I will have to resort to chemicals. I predict that I will have to backwash the new system almost every day for the first few days because it's got to remove so much built-up crap.
My garden is a wreck in progress. Pak choi, broccoli, & cauliflower have all bolted thoroughly. Green onions are wilting and chard can't seem to recover after getting pummeled flat by hail a few weeks ago. The blueberry bushes look good but the berries are puckered. Alas. The tomatoes are growing like crazy though, & I had my first strawberry yesterday. Peppers also look pretty healthy. Next year, that raised bed will be filled with tomatoes, peppers, & other bona fide sun-lovers only, & the cruciferous crowd will go in a box on the north side of the house. I also might try a later crop of broccoli in September, when the sun has lost some of its fierceness.
The fish pond - oh, the fish pond. I fought a valiant fight there, my friends. But 14 hours a day of unfiltered star radiation has made the algae bloom beyond the control of snails, tilapia, competing plants, shitty filters, & me. The homebrew "filter" I inherited from the previous owners of our house was completely ineffective, so I broke down & paid about $500 for a state-of-the-art Laguna triple filtration system. The new pump & filter should more than double the filtration rate, & will pass the water through a mechanical filter (foam pads that catch gross contamination), a biofilter (lava rocks that incubate colonies of healthy bacteria), & a UV filter (to kill algae, specifically). I got the whole new system set up last night. It looks nice - the waterfall sounds really cheery with the increased water flow rate & I replaced the previous white PVC discharge pipe with a much less noticeable black dishwasher hose. I couldn't see a difference in water quality this morning, but online reviews have said it will probably take a week to clear up the pea-soup conditions. I am also planning to reduce the fish population by giving away a few fish to neighbors who are installing a pond. I think that these changes should finally bring the water quality problems to heel -- if not, I will have to resort to chemicals. I predict that I will have to backwash the new system almost every day for the first few days because it's got to remove so much built-up crap.
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As for your pond algae issues, the quote that comes to mind is "Curse you, Aqua-Scum!"
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And the fish! They are much more active - & numerous! Turns out they spawned & I never even knew because I couldn't see the baby fish in the mucky water! I've been reading about koi spawning & I doubt these little babies will last (their parents will probably eat them all), but it's cool to know they are there.