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Do you think that spring is actually here?? The ice is gone and our ponds are starting to wake up. Hope everybody's fish and plants made it through the winter. Ponds with bubblers that I know of made it through in great shape (except for one that had a hole drilled in the liner with an ice auger -- more on this at our meeting). Just keeping a hole in the ice is not enough for ponds with a lot of fish and a high organic load. We have to circulate our ponds. We will have a meeting this fall on this subject so stay tuned.
Now that our plants are starting to grow we need to be thinking of repotting the ones that have overgrown their pots or planting pockets. That will be the subject of our next meeting. Very timely and an important one to not miss. I will be doing a hands on repotting of a water lily and a lotus. Several of our members will also be on hand to assist in the demonstration. We will be showing how to divide, fertilize, and pot them up the right way. We should have a couple of divisions for door prizes. Bring your questions -- we should have a great time playing in the dirt. The meeting will be Monday, April 14. It will start at 7:00 PM at the Alliant facility. There will not be a Director's meeting that night.
Our plant exchange/sale is going to be on Saturday, May 10. In the past we have had sale on an evening in conjunction with our regular meeting and it was tough to get both accomplished. Time and location is still being decided on but mark your calendar for the 10th. We will be needing your extra plant divisions to have at the sale. Keep this in mind when you are repotting your plants. Can't let any plant material go to waste!! Remember this is one of money raisers that allows us to invite and pay for guest speakers -- like Deb Spencer.
To compliment our plant sale we may have some really unique plants that will not be able to get anywhere else. We may even have some Victoria water lilies there. Those are those really big lilies (7 foot leaves) that we saw at 7B Ranch last year. Stay tuned.
Our meeting for Monday, May 12 will be Ryan Walrod on Landscape Lighting Around Our Ponds and Gardens. More on this later. So, we have two great functions lined up two days apart. It can't get any better than this!!
See ya at the meeting.
The Big Toad, Jamie
I have a bale of barley straw from Joe Morris. He will give out free slabs at the meeting on a first come, first served basis.
Mary Hayes of Garden Link has generously offered to our membership free samples of Aquatic Spikes Plant Food. She is sending the fertilizer to me and we will be passing them out at our next two meetings. For more information about Garden Link, contact their website at http://www.gardenlink.com We want to thank Mary for being so generous to our members.