Greater Washington Aquatic Plant Association » Blog Archive

June 2009 Meeting

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am

The June GWAPA meeting was held at Sherry Mitchell’s house in Centreville, Virginia. Sherry is a garden writer and president of the Potomac Valley Aquarium Society. Thirty people came to hear Sherry talk about her garden, ponds, and aquatic gardening in containers.

Sherry started her presentation with a tour of the garden which backs up to Cub Run Valley Stream Park. The third-acre tract, in a subdivision in Western Fairfax County, is a registered backyard wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. The Mitchell’s have provided food, shelter, nesting sites and water in their garden in the form of berry-producing shrubs and trees, evergreens, bird boxes and hedgerows, and water features through out the property. Sherry explained that the twenty-year old garden was typical of many suburban lots when they first moved in, and that she and her husband have selected most of the plantings for the benefit of wildlife. Turtles frequent the garden to breed, as do a variety of birds, butterflies, reptiles, small mammals and deer. Deer are always a problem as they want to eat most of the plants, but the Mitchell’s have found plants that are unpalatable to the deer through years of trial and error.

The Mitchell’s beautiful reflecting pool was the highlight of the tour. During the tour, Sherry Mitchell showed off the 100 gallon stock-tank/filter for the 2000 gallon pond. Three layers of Matala Filter Matting capture debris and mulm from the pond, keeping the water crystal clear. She explained how the pump sends 2900 gallons of water an hour into the filter, which then upflows through the matting and exits the filter via an overflow tube back to the pond.

The pond is home to a colorful school of goldfish, many of which are descended from the original six feeder fish she introduced to the pond 16 years ago. Friendly comets, shubunkins, and sarassa goldfish hungrily cruised the surface looking for a handout, and a few even took a piece of banana from Kavin. Inchlong baby fish could also be seen if one stood still long enough to pick out their dun coloring in the pond. Frogs also make the pond their home and several leopard and green frogs were present that day, letting visitors get very close before they dove into the water.

Several varieties of water lilies were blooming in the afternoon sun. Sherry grows generic white and yellow lilies. The yellow lilies are almost 20 years old and have been propagated for many years. They were originally bought at a fish hatchery when Sherry was gardening in water tubs. A red ‘Indiana’ lily, bought from Jim Michaels at a GWAPA auction last year was also blooming well in the pond. The most stunning lilies, however, were the ‘Pink Grapefruit’ and ‘Perry’s Orange Sunset’, two orange-peachy colored lilies that were as big as, well… as big as grapefruits! Their center petals were a soft, buttery yellow blushed in peach, with outer petals a vivid orange-peach color reminiscent of the setting sun. Sherry stated that these two lilies were her most recent acquisitions, bought last year from internet friends, and that they had quickly become her favorites.

The pond is also home to several varieties of marginal plants. A large container of yellow water iris (Iris pseudacorus) was home to the eggs laid by many of the goldfish earlier in the spring. Other plants include purple flowering pickerel rush (Pontederia cordata), water arum (Peltandra virginica), variegated sweetflag (Acorus calamus ‘variegataus’), and spike rush (Eleocharis montevidensis), and submerged anacharis (which was blooming in the sunlight) which Sherry said grows as much as one inch a day in the summer and feeds the goldfish between their meals of pond pellets.

After the garden tour, members moved to the shaded patio where Sherry shared her techniques for growing such outstanding lilies and water plants. She shared her aquatic plant potting soil recipe (see below) and showed the different types of containers one can use for potting up aquatic plants. Sherry uses a variety of containers from wash tubs and colanders from the dollar store, to plastic under-the-bed boxes from Walmart and margarine containers. Containers with holes are lined with black shade cloth to prevent soil fines from escaping, although Sherry said that any fabric will work in a pinch — even old cotton sheeting.

Sherry had small cuttings of pickerel weed, sweet flag, creeping jenny, canna, and baby water lilies that she used in the demonstration. She carefully planted up a dark colored wash tub with the marginal plants and topped the whole thing off with gravel. The tub will find a home in a large fiberglass pool Sherry has next to her front door for the summer. The baby lilies will also go in the pool once they are repotted as well. Sherry stated that water lilies are “heavy feeders” and once the time released fertilizer she uses is spent (in about a year) she relies on Jobe’s Aquatic Plant Spikes to fertilize the water plants and lilies.

Sherry also demonstrated how to put together a small version of her big pond filter for smaller water gardens. Called a “Mini-Skippy” filter (For step-by-step instructions see: http://www.skippysstuff.com/biofiltr.htm), the small filter is ideal for container water gardens with fish. Using the same upflow technique with small filter pads, the filter is designed to keep fish healthy in tubs, small pools, and water gardens.

Once the outdoor demonstration was done, members moved to Sherry’s basement for a tour of her fishroom. The basement room is less than 150 square feet, but houses more than 20 tanks, ranging in size from 2.5 gallons to 75 gallons. Sherry keeps a wide variety of fish in the room: several types of guppies, goldfish, blue gouramis, killifish, endlers, neon swordtails, assorted tetras, sailfin mollies, freshwater puffers, cory catfish, red cherry shrimp, and even a rescued convict cichlid and red devil. Most of the tanks are heavily planted with “easy” aquatic plants like val, java moss, java fern, hygro, rotala, najas grass, and a variety of sword plants. Sherry stated that she “is no Amano, but it works for me and my fish,” as she showed off her tanks. She laughed about the use of plastic plants in a couple of tanks, saying that the goldfish ate everything she put in their tank, so she had to go with plastics. The fake plants were tastefully arranged with large stones in the goldfish tank, and many members understood the frustration of trying to raise plants with hungry goldfish. Duckweed was apparent in many tanks and Sherry stated that she grows the duckweed on purpose, to feed the goldfish. “Many people don’t realize that goldfish need a lot of vegetable matter in their diet, so I grow the duckweed for them, harvest it out of my tanks and feed it to them.”

Growing duckweed on purpose would make many aquatic gardeners gasp, but it was merely indicative of Ms. Mitchell’s determination to achieve results in her fish room, garden, and many pursuits. While not the typical suburban tract, Sherry Mitchell’s garden sanctuary, pond and fish room thrive with lush verdancy, life and a vitality borne of her can-do attitude.

Click for Sherry’s Aquatic Plant Potting Soil Recipe.

Photos courtesy of Jim Michaels: