Pond watch: 2 weeks later
July 31, 2009 Two weeks after installing my new 717-gallon stock-tank pond, the water has cleared to a soft green, which I actually quite like. I can see the fish clearly, but the water is not so crystalline that the underwater pots and cinderblocks stand out. If I’d waited another ...
Pond gardening in a drought
July 27, 2009 Living in a drought for three years, now classified as “exceptional,” a gardener can get a little soul-weary. A still pond, I’m finding, has healing powers. The surface may be starred with the most beautiful of flowers, the water lily. This one is ‘Colorado.’ Orange and red ...
Pond watch: 1 week later
July 23, 2009 It’s been just over a week since I installed my stock-tank pond, and the water has, predictably, turned mossy green from algae. No worries though. It’ll clear up pretty soon. The triple offense of submerged, oxygenating plants, algae-eating fish, and surface-covering water lilies will work their magic ...
How to make a container pond in a stock tank
July 14, 2009Over the years of blogging about my stock-tank ponds (a 100-gallon container pond in my former garden, and this new 717-gallon one), I’ve been asked many times how I constructed them. I finished the new pond yesterday evening, so I’ll explain how I did it, from start to ...
Filling up the stock-tank pond
July 08, 2009 The unfinished stock-tank pond was making me feel lazy. So this morning I got out a measuring tape, level, shovel, gloves, bug spray, and sun hat, and got to work. My vacationing husband helped me measure and dig the trench for the retaining wall, and then he ...
Stock-tank pond inspiration
July 06, 2009 If you’ve been following my saga of the unfinished stock-tank pond with furrowed brow, wondering why I don’t get off my butt and finish it, take heart. My helpful husband went to the stoneyard with me this morning to help me haul home a trunkload of limestone ...
Garden project blues
June 18, 2009 I’ve got the blues. Not this kind. Nor this kind. This kind. The garden-project blues. Why don’t the garden-project fairies come and set up my new stock-tank pond for me? It’d be easy, really. All this project needs is a couple of trunkloads of limestone, carefully stacked ...
That post-rain glow
May 24, 2009 Heuchera and ‘Toffee Twist’ sedge, also called copper sedge ( Carex flagellifora) The new-baby garden glowed green and wet yesterday afternoon. Memorial Day weekend is typically rainy in Austin, and this year has proved no exception, despite the ongoing drought. ‘Wilson’s Yellow’ daylily This puny rain gauge ...
Circle garden progress: Lawn is gone!
May 20, 2009 Carlos, Jorge, and Alex are all smiles after digging out the circle lawn, leveling the slope by moving soil, and bringing in almost two cubic yards of decomposed granite. Thanks to their hard work, I’m smiling too. On Monday I faced facts. If I were going to ...
Stock tank pond in the works
May 13, 2009 As I was gazing down on the circle lawn one afternoon… …I realized that the bit of lawn wasn’t really floating my boat. Wouldn’t it be more fun, I mused, to have a big ole stock tank pond in the middle? Oh yeah!! It was time to ...
Plant This: Macho Mocha mangave
March 25, 2009 My ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave (pronounced man-GAH-vay) is budding its first bloom stalk! I’m very excited and checking on it almost hourly. When I transplanted it from my old garden last fall, giving it a solo spot in a low stock tank, I never expected it to respond ...
Three years later, another blogiversary
February 16, 2009 ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave “Digging” was born three years ago today, though it was alive in my mind way before that as I read other garden blogs and longed to join the conversation. After a few posts—and a few miraculous comments—I was hooked. Three years later, I’m still ...
Succulent trough planter
January 09, 2009 I spied this luscious stock-tank planter filled with succulents at Thunderbird Coffee on Koenig today. The plump, green succulents in varying textures include Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ on each end, a blushing kalanchoe under a pencil tree (Euphorbia tirucalli ) in the middle, and an unknown in the ...
Using stock tanks in the garden
December 12, 2008 Lately an unassuming container made for ranch life has been appearing in creative and stylish urban gardens: the stock tank, or cattle trough. It’s Old Texas meets New Texas, and boy howdy, it works. Warehoused among poultry feed, hog fencing, and deer corn at farm-supply stores like ...
Transplanted & tanked up
November 10, 2008 Last week I finally got the transplants from my old garden, plus a few new plants, into the raised beds I’d cleaned out recently. Today I finished mulching—the desert plants in decomposed granite, the others in shredded hardwood mulch. And since I couldn’t feel at home in ...
Transplanted & tanked up
November 10, 2008 Last week I finally got the transplants from my old garden, plus a few new plants, into the raised beds I’d cleaned out recently. Today I finished mulching—the desert plants in decomposed granite, the others in shredded hardwood mulch. And since I couldn’t feel at home in ...
