“How to make a container pond in a stock tank” is consistently one of my most-viewed posts, and many readers have written to tell me they’ve made their own ponds by following my instructions. Recently two people asked me how to winterize their ponds, so I decided to explain how in part 2 of what will be a 3-part series. This spring I’ll end the series by showing how to divide pond plants and prep the pond for summer growth.

Winterizing a stock-tank pond is actually quite simple in Austin’s mild-winter climate. It involves these six steps (3 of which are really inactions):

Scoop fallen leaves
Use a net to scoop fallen leaves off the surface of your pond several times a week to keep them from sinking and decomposing in the bottom of your tank. My pond is situated near live oaks, which don’t lose their leaves until March, so my biggest leaf clean-up occurs then.

Don’t divide pond plants yet
Your water lilies and other pond plants likely grew vigorously over the summer, and you may have noticed that some of them are literally bursting out of their pots. It’s amazing what these plants are capable of. By fall, my water lilies are no longer blooming as much, and their leaves may be mottled and a bit mushy, but at the bottom of the pond they are vigorous monsters, with roots creeping out of their pots and possibly supporting a fully formed baby plant. Marginal plants that live at the top of the pond, like dwarf papyrus, may have reproduced as well, with new plants rooting from fallen stems floating in the water.

It may be tempting to divide and repot your pond plants now, since they are clearly trying so hard to reproduce, but don’t. The first hard freeze will likely turn your lilies into mush, causing them to die back to the roots. That’s fine. Just pull out any mushy stems and rotten leaf pads; they should easily come loose when you lightly tug them. In our typical mild winters, your lilies may retain leaves and even bloom occasionally through the winter. Enjoy!

Drop cold-tender plants to the bottom of the pond during hard freezes
Hard freezes won’t hurt hardy water lilies (tropical lilies may need to be overwintered indoors). But they might kill your cold-tender marginal plants, which live at the top of the pond. I’ve lost dwarf papyrus and pond crinum in hard freezes, for example. So now, when a hard freeze is predicted, I drop the pots to the bottom of the pond until the air temperature is above freezing again. In central Texas, hard freezes rarely last longer than a few hours, so I’ll pull the plants back up to their perches in the afternoon. But if we get a real doozy of a cold snap, I’ll leave them at the bottom for two or three days, and they’ll be fine—a little mushy, perhaps, but alive.

Turn off your bubbler pump or fountain during hard freezes
If you have a pump in your pond, turn it off if a hard freeze is predicted unless it’s powerful enough to keep the water from freezing. I don’t take a chance, and simply unplug mine during freezing weather. The pump itself sits a foot under the surface, so it’s not going to be damaged even if the surface of the water ices over. If your pump sits right at the surface, then drop it to the bottom of the pond or remove it so that water is not able to freeze inside it.

Stop feeding fish
I rarely feed my goldfish and gambusia fish, and they survive just fine on algae, mosquito larvae (they keep the tank clean of these pests), and my underwater plants. But if you regularly feed your fish, stop when the weather turns cool. The fish will go into a semi-dormant state over the winter, and they won’t be able to digest food properly until the water warms up again. Just let them be.

Stop fertilizing your plants
Most pond plants stop growing in cooler weather, so stop using fertilizer tablets now. From late October to early April, don’t fertilize. Resume feeding after you’ve divided your plants in spring (which I’ll cover in detail next spring).

Remember: Prepping your stock-tank pond for winter may require more extensive measures if you live in a colder climate than I do—including, perhaps, overwintering your fish indoors, unplugging your pump, and even emptying your pond for the season. The winterization that I do is sufficient for my 2-foot deep pond in my zone 8b garden.

This is part 2 of a 3-part pond series:
Part 1 — How to make a container pond in a stock tank
Part 2 — Winterizing a stock tank pond
Part 3 — How to spring clean your stock tank container pond

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Do you ever visit nurseries when you travel, or the garden of a friend who offers to dig up a few plants for you to take home? Or maybe you fly across the country to the Garden Bloggers Fling, the Garden Writers Association symposium, or one of the big flower shows, and you’ve gotten some plant swag to take home, too many to carry onto the plane.

This happened to me at the recent Garden Writers symposium in Tucson. The tipping point, when I knew I could no longer just carry my plants onto the plane with me, occurred in the vendor exhibition hall, when Scott Calhoun and the Civano Nursery rep urged me to take a gorgeous 5-gallon Indian mallow (Abutilon palmeri). Look at it! How could I resist a plant with velvety, silver-green leaves and cupped orange blossoms that resemble globe mallow‘s—but it’s an abutilon?? This Arizona native is a bit touchy about freezing weather, so I don’t even know if it’ll survive in my Austin garden. But I was willing to give it a try since it was free.

It adorned my hotel room’s balcony until the night before my flight. Then it was time to prep it for packing in my suitcase. First I pruned off all those beautiful blooming branches—sob! I didn’t have any pruners with me, but the pliable branches were easy to snap and break off.

Then I wrapped an old towel (brought for just such an occasion) around the top of the root ball to help hold the soil in place. Twisted coils of newspaper would have worked too.

If the weight of the plant was a concern for checking my bag, I’d been advised to knock all the soil off, wrap the roots in damp newspaper, and put the wrapped roots in a plastic bag, thereby eliminating the weight of the soil. But luckily I’d thought to bring a duffel bag for my clothes, so I moved all my clothes to the duffel, leaving room in my big suitcase for plants and my toiletries bag, which could get wet without harm.

I stuffed the plant in a plastic garbage bag and put another one on top, just to help keep any loose soil from dumping out in my suitcase. Laid on its side, it was a perfect fit.

I had all these little freebies to bring home too. I watered them all the morning before my departure so they’d be moist but not sopping when it was time to pack them.

I wrapped newspaper in a cone shape around the pots and secured the sheets with rubberbands. I put one in a plastic zip-top bag that I had brought along.

My toiletries bag fit snugly next to the Indian mallow, holding that plant securely in place. I tightly packed the smaller plants at the top of the bag, padding out any gaps with more newspaper.

The next morning I had a momentary fear that I would be over the weight limit with this bag, but all was well. It checked through just fine, and I settled in for a day of travel. Again, if you have any concerns about the weight limit, consider leaving the soil behind and wrapping the plant’s bare roots in moist newspaper or towels.

As soon as I got home, I unzipped the bag and pulled out the plants. Thanks to the tight packing job, they were all in place, with just a little loose soil in the suitcase. Here’s the Indiana mallow, looking just fine.

And the smaller plants looked great too. They soon straightened back up and looked none the worse for their flight home in a suitcase.

Remember that certain countries and even U.S. states have rules about bringing plants across the border. Check the legality before bringing any plants on your flight.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

A big shout-out and thank you to my handy husband, who created this plumbing-pipe-and-spigot fountain for me for Mother’s Day. I’d come home from a visit to my friend Cat’s garden in love with the look after seeing one that she and her husband made for their pond. The genesis for hers was the desire to put to good use an old spigot that had belonged to her grandfather. We didn’t have a spigot with that kind of history, so my husband chose a brass version with a twist-knob on top. It turned out great! Didn’t he do a fine job?

We placed it in the middle of the pond to reduce any water loss due to splashing. The galvanized plumbing pipe complements the galvanized tank.

To allow the pipe to stand unsupported in the middle of the pond, he ran the pipe through a bucket with a hole cut in the bottom just big enough for the pipe to fit into, and then he poured concrete in the bucket and let it harden for a few days. When it was cured, the bucket slid right off the concrete. The pipe sticks out about an inch from the bottom of the concrete, allowing for the attachment of flexible tubing, which attaches at its other end to the pump itself. The flexible tubing gives us leeway so we can move the fountain around, while the pump sits conveniently close to the edge for easy cleaning. Stacked bricks under the concrete support the pipe-fountain while leaving room beneath for the projecting inch of pipe and the tubing. The pump’s cord hangs over the far edge of the tank and is attached to an outdoor extension cord, which runs through a buried PVC pipe to a GFI-protected outlet in the shed.

From all directions, the view looks great, and the sound of running water is music to my ears and is already attracting more birds. I’ve always said that you do not need to have a pump to make a successful container pond, and that’s still true. But I do like the sound and sight of the moving water, and now I feel comfortable adding goldfish to the pond, since the pump will provide aeration and help cool the surface of the water. Before, this pond supported native gambusia fish only, which are hardier in warm water than goldfish.

I took this image in the morning as the ‘Colorado’ water lilies were opening. I didn’t think I could love my stock-tank pond any more, but now I do!

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.