On Gardeners' World on 2 June 2017, 19 minutes into the show Nick Bailey showed us how to make a wildlife pond out of a barrel.
I've long wanted a pond, so we followed his steps, more or less, to make our own. Here are the steps (and approximate costs):
1. Buy a half barrel that is water tight. We bought a red wine half barrel with a diameter of 73 cm for £54.99 from eBay/Celtic Timber. You need to make sure it's watertight before you buy it. Some are sold as planters with holes already drilled in the bottom and some may not be waterproof for other reasons.
2. Work out where you want to put it. You don't need to sink it into the ground, although it may not be as useful for wildlife if you don't. Nick Bailey recommended putting the pond in partial shade and near a route through between your garden and neighbouring wilder areas that wasn't blocked by a solid fence. I live in a suburban area and my garden is entirely surrounded by solid fence, so I made a choice based on aesthetics and where we had partial shade (=3-6 hours of sun a day). If you have a couple of options, it can help to physically move the barrel there and see how it looks.
3. Once, you've worked out where you're going to put it, if you've decided to sink it in the ground, dig a hole slightly bigger than the barrel.
4. Put the barrel in the hole to make sure the hole is the right size. The barrel rim should be a couple of centimetres higher than the surrounding earth to stop lots of earth falling into the pond. Once we had dug the correct size, we then took the barrel out again and stamped the earth down to try and make it more level. We then put some gravel in the hole to help with levelling (and to get rid of some spare gravel we had left over from another project). This is optional.
5. Use a spirit level to check if the barrel is completely level. If it isn't, keep working on it until you have it level.
6. Buy or find some bricks. Ones with holes in them are good. We used 10 and ours cost 74 p each from B&Q, but around half of them were already lying around the garden. We gave them a good rinse before we put them in the pond, as we didn't want to add unnecessary soil or brick dust.
7. Place the bricks round the edges of the pond to create shelves of different heights to put your pond plants on. Our shelves are a mixture of two and three bricks deep. This is a good time to experiment with where the bricks go, as they will dictate where your plants go.
8. Make sure you have water available to go in your pond. Ideally this should be rainwater from a water butt. According to Nick Bailey, if you have to use tap water, allow it to stand for a few days first to allow it to neutralise. He didn't say, but I'm guessing you can leave it to stand in the barrel and just put your plants in after a few days. Don't use water from other ponds, as this could transfer disease to your pond.
8. Buy pond plants (aquatic plants) for the pond and place on the bricks. Make sure that the plants suit your pond conditions. I made sure all my plants were able to tolerate partial shade (they really need to be able to, that pond gets a maximum of 3 hours of sun a day). I also made sure they were suitable for small or medium ponds. I'm possibly pushing my luck a bit with plants suitable for medium ponds. Time will tell. Finally, I also made sure they were all suitable for planting depth zone 2 or 3. Based on the labels, planting depth zone 2 means the higher level of bricks in my pond and zone 3 means my lower level of bricks.
If you buy the plants already potted up in aquatic baskets (plastic plant pot-style baskets with holes in the sides), then you can just put the plants straight in the pond. If you buy them without the aquatic baskets, then you will need to pot them up yourself. Here's some information about that.
I picked a range of plants based partly on the ones Nick Bailey chose, partly on the fact that I wanted them all to have white flowers (I didn't quite succeed) and partly on the fact that another website recommended that I should include an oxgenator and partly based on what was available at my local garden centre. The plants were 3 for £12 or £5 each, so I spent £24.
My plants were:
Slender club rush 'Scirpus cernuus' - my oxygenator
Water plantain 'Alisma plantago' - the one I noticed too late wasn't quite white
White water spearmint 'Preslia cervina alba'
Iris (snow queen) - probably. It was a label stuck over the original label. When it grows it may turn out to be the blue bog iris, iris sibirica.
Barred horsetail 'Equisetum Japonicum' x 2
The plants Nick Bailey mentioned in the show for in the pond were:
Iris versicolour 'Blue flag'
Rough horsetail - Equisetum hyemale'
Pendulous sage - Carex pendula (this is a transitional plant that you can plant either inside or outside the pond)
Water spearmint - Mentha cervina
Nymphaea 'Solifatare' (minature waterlily)
The plants he mentioned for around the pond were:
Ligularia dentata 'Dark beauty' (leopard plant)
Dryopteris filix-mas (male fern)
Here's a link to another website which suggests further alternatives to Nick Bailey's choices and also names some of the plants he planted, but didn't name on camera.
I really want a miniature waterlily for my pond, but all of them say they need full sun, including the one Nick Bailey used. What's probably going to happen is that I'll see how the other plants get on and leave the decision till next year. Anyhow, on with the instructions.
9. Pour in the water. Mine took around 15 7-litre watering cans full, i.e. around 105 litres less splashes etc.
10. Add some pond dye in order to prevent algae from growing and taking over your pond. Stir. We chose black because it mainly just makes it look like our pond is just much deeper than it is. Nick Bailey said you hardly need to use any of it. The show showed him adding about 1/6 of a teaspoon. The dye I bought from Amazon (£14.95) said I should use a 5 ml scoop per 40 litres. Torn between what it said to do on the pack (2.5 scoops for 100 litres) and Nick Bailey's suggestion that you hardly need any, I put 2 scoops in. In retrospect, I think that was too much and the pond is darker than necessary. Next time (in about 3 months according to the pack), I'll try using much less. The pack I bought came with gloves (to stop it staining your hands, it's non-toxic) and a 5 ml scoop.
11. Fill in the soil around the pond. Nick Bailey said to soak the barrel to expand it and make it waterproof before using it. We figured that soaking it was very similar to filling it, so we decided to simply keep an eye on it for whether we needed to top it up and leave it a week before filling the soil in, in case it makes a difference. We're not sure how much difference it made. It stopped noticeably seeping water from the sides during that time, but after I added the dye, this seeped into the barrel too and the staining pattern changed every time it rained. Also, it barely lost any water even when you could see small amounts seeping out the side.
11. Add some plants around the pond.
12. If your pond is a bit higher out of the ground than mine, add some stones by the rim to act as a bridge for wildlife getting into the pond.
My original plan was to plant the surrounding area up with carex pendula and ferns and other similar plants like Nick Bailey did. However, at this point I realised a) that I'd already spent nearly £100 on the pond (which made me feel a bit guilty) and b) that ferns and similar plants were not cheap (and I had no guarantee that they weren't going to prove unsuitable for the area and die).
Obviously, in an area that only gets 3 hours of sun a day (between about 8.45 and 11.45 a.m.), I need plants that tolerate shade well. Even though it's been raining a lot recently and the pond is completely full and has almost certainly overflowed, it doesn't seem to get wet to the point of marshiness there. So what I decided to do was to transplant some shade-loving British native plants there that I was already growing seedlings of. It now has a mixture of foxgloves and honesty seedlings growing round the edge. Both are partial-shade-tolerant biennials and should flower next year, if they survive transplantation. I'm certain the honesty will survive, I've transplanted that before. It's a matter of wait and see with the foxgloves. I will also be open to letting anything attractive that seeds itself there stay there.
Currently, I'd still like to add some ferns, but I'm also open to seeing what develops.
Here's a view of the garden from above so you can see how the pond fits into it. Clue: It's on the far right more or less opposite the greenhouse door, just in front of the apple tree, behind a pile of earth that I will be gradually spreading over the rest of the garden or otherwise removing.
Edited: You also need to add a way for wildlife to get into and out of the pond, for instance a plank of wood in the pond that provides a gentle slope for any creatures to crawl out of. Also, it's well worth checking which ponds plants can withstand frost and what you need to do over winter with any that can't. Most of my pond plants died in the first winter.
Fairly early in the season, my greenhouse got infected with little red pests that I believe to be red spider mites.
I suspect the invasion arrived either when I bought some pepper seedlings from a local garden centre or when I started to leave the door and window open to stop the greenhouse from getting too hot. That's not important. What's important is that despite my best efforts at crushing the pests to death between finger and thumb, the problem has increased in size along with the growth in plants in my greenhouse.
I read around a bit on the topic and came to the conclusion that these things are persistent and difficult to deal with. Organic suggestions for killing them included crushing them (which I did), spraying them with water because they don't like being damp (which I did), blasting them with water (which I did outdoors on the worst affected plants using a hose), using neem oil (which I didn't) and clearing the greenhouse out very thoroughly with disinfectant after you've removed all the plants and all organic material at the end of the season (which we haven't got to yet).
I do actually own some neem oil. My problem with it is that every time I mix it with water (and washing up liquid to help it mix), it quickly destroys the spray bottle I put it in until all the bottle is capable of producing is a single fine line of spray in response to considerable pumping. It's done it often enough that I don't currently dare put it in my new spray bottles, making me owning the neem oil a little bit pointless. Maybe I'll be braver next year.
Anyway, what I can tell you is that although I believe my spraying with water and crushing and occasional blast with a hose to have kept the pest level lower than it would otherwise have been, it hasn't stopped it growing. The most effective thing I've done I actually did by accident: I transferred some of the plants there was no longer room for in the greenhouse outside and planted them in the front garden. They no longer have any sign of spider mites on them. This got me to thinking: what if I move all the plants in the greenhouse outside? So I did.
I took all the plants in the greenhouse (except the tomatoes, which were too huge for me to brave moving and seemed unaffected by mites) out of the greenhouse and lined them up along the path. The weather was so warm that I had no concerns at all that it would be to cool for them outside. My original plan was to leave them out there for a week. Unfortunately high winds and thunder storms got in the way, so I had to move them back inside after only a few days. At this point they were still infested with mites, but the infestation was much smaller than it had been originally.
I think what is probably happening is that mites are delicious, but things that find them delicious only live outside the greenhouse. And possibly also that these mites are a lot less keen on weather in the UK than greenhouse climates. When I moved them outside, I saw insects flocking to them, especially ladybirds.
I suspect that mite infestation is going to be a regular event for me in the greenhouse and that my regular solutions are going to involve crushing the mites by hand and moving the plants outside when it's sunny for other insects to feast on them. It should be noted that the strategy of moving the plants outside is not without risks. The plants are quite capable of picking up new types of infestation while out there - for instance green fly. And it was also possible that my infestation would simply spread to other plants in the garden. However, neither of these things appeared to have happened with my front garden peppers, so I decided to brave it and have been rewarded by a significant drop in my infestation level. Warning: this solution worked in the UK. It is possible that it is specific to something about the UK environment. If spider mites are a common problem outside of greenhouses in your country (or if the weather outdoors in your country would kill greenhouse plants), then this is unlikely to be of any help to you and may even worsen the problem.
We have a glut of courgettes* in the garden from just two plants. In fact, they keep ending up the size of marrows before I get round to picking them. So I'm now experimenting with courgette and marrow recipes. This is a pleasant recipe for soup that uses up a lot of courgette (or marrow), presumably making it pretty good for you in terms of getting your five a day, but tastes almost entirely of garlic and potato, meaning it's also palatable for people who like neither courgettes nor marrows.
Courgette/marrow, potato and sage soup
750g courgette or marrow, peeled & diced (seeds removed if using a marrow or marrow-sized courgette)
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped/minced
1-2 tbsp olive oil
400g potato, peeled & diced
4 fresh sage leaves
750 ml boiling water (more for a more liquid soup - I like mine more towards the puree end of the spectrum)
1 vegetable or chicken stock cube
Salt & pepper
10 g chopped parsley (optional)
1. Peel the courgette or marrow. If using a marrow or a courgette the size of a marrow, then remove and discard the seeds, for normal-sized courgettes leave the seeds in. Dice the courgette/marrow, then set aside for later.
2. Peel and chop the onion and garlic (or just use frozen). In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil then cook the onion and garlic gently until tender. Stir occasionally.
3. While the onion and garlic are cooking, peel and chop the potatoes.
4. Add the courgette/marrow, potato and sage leaves to the pan and stir. Sweat over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Add the boiling water, stock cube, salt and pepper and bring to the boil.
6. Put the lid on and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.
7. Cool slightly (by adding ice cubes if in a rush), fish out the sage leaves and discard these.
8. Liquidise the soup in as many batches as necessary.
9. Taste and add more salt or pepper or boiling water as necessary. You can also optionally add some chopped parsley.
Serve with courgette bread if your glut of courgettes is as huge as mine! Serve with the bread of your choice if you're not racking your brains over how to use up all those courgettes that suddenly grew.
The garden is very green and beautiful this year. There's hardly been any powdery mildew on the cucurbits yet - just a few spots, and I pulled the leaves off to stop it spreading.
The cucurbits are absolutely huge as well. Some of that will be down to the fact that I spread large quantities of composted stable manure over the soil before planting. Cucurbits love a good bit of composted manure. I can't imagine all the warmth and sunshine we've had this year hurts either. But I ascribe a lot of this healthy appearance to the fact that I've been watering regularly. In fact, I've been watering on most days when it doesn't rain. For comparison, here were my cucurbits last year on around 17 July 2016:
17 July 2016
It's not just my cucurbits, it's also my sweet corn (although admittedly this year I'm growing a different variety and kept it in the greenhouse for longer than I kept 2016's in the house). Here's the corn today (4 July 2017):
4 July 2017
4 July 2017
And here it was on around 17 July 2016:
17 July 2016
As people keep pointing out, it looks much healthier this year. You'll also notice that everything's in a different location because I've been rotating my crops.
In case you were in any doubt, here are the sunflowers I've been watering most days this year:
And here are the sunflowers I left to their own devices:
It's hard to believe those photos were taken on the same day, but they were.
I've also discovered that when packets of seeds tell you you need to water regularly until established, they mean "if you want all your seedlings to grow and not just die of thirst shortly after germination". I didn't lose all the seedlings I didn't water daily, but I got fewer gaps in my rows that I did water every day.
What brought on all this watering? Well, two things. The arrival of the new shed with its guttering to catch all that water and the arrival of the water butts to store it in.
We had enough rain to fill the first one fairly soon after it was plumbed in, so I started watering to use it up, because I was worried we'd have so much rain that the overflow would be large enough in quantity to damage the garden.
Watering was a revelation. Everything in the garden looked so healthy and grew so well. I couldn't bear to let it dry out again when the water ran out. So I started watering with the hose every day when I didn't have any water left in the water butts. I do have some environmental guilt about that, especially as I'm using water that's been processed to a drinking standard. But I've carried on anyhow and soothe my conscience by eating the vegetables and using water from the water butts whenever it's available.
