Who Has A Pond ? Water And Bog Plants

[Pulsegleaner]

I grew some forbidden rice in some very wet soil once (rice does not in fact need standing water, just a lot of moisture thought not to heading (it ran out of room)

You might actually want to check Baker Creek. They seem to have a LOT of rice seeds in at the moment, and may have something that can fit your needs more exactly that Fedco's

As for water chestnuts, they might word but since I think they need it pretty warm, it'd be only an annual. Just make sure you are getting ACTUAL water chestnuts. Some sellers still use the word "water chesnut" to refer to the water caltrops (Trapa bicornis/ natans ) You probably DON'T want those as they are very aggressive and invasive (especially natans which also has the disadvantage of having seed pods that are stabbingly sharp)

If you want edible things, there is also water mimosa (Neptunia olaracea). Besides being sort of fun (like standard sensitive plant, the leaves will collapse if you touch them) the shoots are a stir fryable green. I admit though I am uncertain as to how to get seed for that (the only place I found online that seems to offer it is in Australia, and while they say they will ship worldwide I imagine the postage would be prohibitive. And while the bunches I see in Chinatown in their season often have flowers and green pods, I have as yet seen no bunches so far gone as to have pods that would yield mature seeds.)

 

[ducks4you]

I have heard AND read that water lillies are invasive and that you should plant them underwater in a pot, so that you can control them from spreading all over your pond. Just FYI.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i think the water mimosa is a runner when i've seen them sold online.

those i've seen selling water chestnuts are definitely not the caltrops. they are selling a corm that looks like a brown round bulb that grows more like a rush or grass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleocharis_dulcis

this is the caltrops (buffalo nut certainly suits it too) & how much different they look. some sites are saying they are edible & grown in other countries for this edible nut but i don't know about that. this looks more like the mosaic plants i've seen but those are on much smaller scale than the caltrops.
https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/waterchestnut.shtml

 

[ninnymary]

@aftermidnight, I love that little spillway. Do you have enough room to get to your raised beds around the pond? It's probably the angle but it looks like there is a foot or less in there.

Mary

 

[Pulsegleaner]

i think the water mimosa is a runner when i've seen them sold online.

those i've seen selling water chestnuts are definitely not the caltrops. they are selling a corm that looks like a brown round bulb that grows more like a rush or grass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleocharis_dulcis

this is the caltrops (buffalo nut certainly suits it too) & how much different they look. some sites are saying they are edible & grown in other countries for this edible nut but i don't know about that. this looks more like the mosaic plants i've seen but those are on much smaller scale than the caltrops.
https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/waterchestnut.shtml

They ARE both edible. You can find bicornis in it's season in Asian markets (they're actually more chestnut-y than water chestnuts, being starchier) and Natans is used sometimes as well especially in risotto. In fact the REASON we have it in this country is escapees from people growing it for food by monks (hence it's alternate name of Jesuit Nut)

Actually, up here you could probably get away with water spinach (ong choi) as well (Imponomea aquatica). Certainly, I can buy seeds of it in Chinatown (thought sort of under the table, you get them in little plastic bags instead of proper seed packets.)

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

heh, sounds like some shady business going on under the table there Pulsegleaner!

actually, some idiot in Boston/Cambridge area in 1870's decided to plant some caltrops in the local waterways. it must have been eradicated since my grandmother lived in Saugus till a few years ago, just outside of Boston & had a diversion ditch that would flood behind her house. i would have expected to see some in there if they were still a nuisance in the area. those are invasive in this area so i definitely don't want to bring them in.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Someone must have once done the same thing here; I remember as a kid filling a bucket with pods picked up off the beach in the Hudson.

And I think the garden seed situation in the Chinatowns is pretty murky to being with. It being the city, there are no real gardening or nursery centers (well, none in the inner boroughs, out on the edges where people have lawns, who knows?) so the seeds tend to be sold either in the supermarkets or in the florists shops. And it is always an odd mix. The supermarkets tends to keep themselves to recognized Asian-American seed distributors (Evergreen YH seems to be the commonest*). But with the florists shops, ANYTHING goes*. One popular one has not pictures on the label at all and the names of ALL conceivable vegetables (in Chinese) on it (they circle what it actually contains with a pen) so you need to know Chinese to find what you want (or, in my case, luck out and happen to have a Chinese kiddie book with pictures of vegetables.)

My four way (florist, garden shop, gift shop and tea shop) has gotten in these HUGE packets presumably from china I think were designed for commercial farmers (I'll get into why later).

Then there was the time when my local place used to get in these packet complexes (as in there'd be a ream of packets in shrink wrap, but when you unwrapped it, the packets inside would be different from each other, they weren't all identical packets packed together) from some company in Thailand. Great for getting some really odd things (like wingbeans) but you never knew if the stuff you were buying would actually grow where you were (not normally a problem with seed bought in a garden shop local to you; they tend to only carry that which has a reasonable chance of growing for their customers)

I actually buy a LOT of seed in Chinatown over a year. I make it a point to get a packet per company per year of any snow peas or yard long beans find (what is in the packet can change from year to year [ Chinese treat most varieties as interchangeable, so the packet will simply be a yard long bean not any type in particular) That's because I am searching for two specific (unknown) types I bumped into once long ago, a snowpea with brick red seeds and a fat wrinkled yard long bean whose seed had the black eyed pea pattern)***

Then there are winter melons which I also buy, though I think it is pretty dumb to sell seed for them. Well, not so much that it is dumb to sell seed for them (it's a perfectly good vegetable, and winter melon soup is delicious and a traditional festive dish). It just dumb that they tend to sell the same type (Canton Giant) as is sold by the vegetable markets. Canton giant is ENORMOUS, like 80-120lbs PER MELON. At the vegetable stands, you buy it by the slice which is plenty for any dish. But if you grow it, you get a WHOLE melon (many probably) So unless you have an huge family I have no clue how you manage to keep up with eating them (It seems like the Chinese version of the zucchini problem) And since there ARE winter melon types whose size is more in line with what a family could actually use (5-15 lbs) I don't know why the packers don't offer THAT one****

* I used to buy a lot of packets of a weirdly named thing from them called Herb/small chives/fennel which was a leafy green with an odd smell (I think it actually may have been a form of dill used in Tianjin (where they use a LOT of dill and fennel tops in their cooking) but I don't think the company sells that anymore.

** Up to and including putting the wrong seeds in the packet. At least once I bought a number (around 5) packets of hyacinth beans only to find that nearly all of the contents on the packets were common beans (purple podded?). What makes it odder is that those packets that DID have some real hyacinth beans had them mixed in with the common beans so someone should have noticed (the two look VERY different)

*** For the yard long, I also buy overripe pods of the veggie stand split them and dry the seed (which is how I found it orignally) but as yet that one has not shown up again. And with the loss of one of my best stands I can't even get my second string one, a not quite so fat white podded one with seeds that are a yin yang of white and red mottled pink.

**** Canton giant seeds look TOTALLY different than those of any other winter melon (enough so I wonder if they are actually a different species) so I can tell if that is what they are.

 

[Carol Dee]

@ducks4you the lilies are in pots so they can be moved to the stock trough we use to over winter the koi. (The pond freezes solid) @Nyboy the water lettuce and water hyacinth like warm weather (the hotter the better) and we have had no luck over wintering them.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

haven't had any luck over wintering the lettuce or hyacinth either. the guy that i used to get my pond stuff from was able to keep them in a greenhouse he kept heated. he used to offer to keep any of the tropical plants over wintered in there but not the lettuce or hyacinth.

 

[Nyboy]

Both are pretty cheap here, about the only water plants that are