"kthirtya" wrote in message
oups.com...
Watercress gets going really early and can be
removed easily, even it rooted in, its roots are
brittle.
I buy mine at the grocery store. It will root upside
down it is so ridiculously easy to grow.

k :-)

Watercress is almost ideal - grows really rapidly even in a settlement tank
with no substrate or in a tank which still has plastic Flocor! Here in the
UK it can go almost dormant during hard winters, but usually restarts growth
very early - I use it in all my filter tanks. We also like to eat
watercress ourselves (much better, fresher and cheaper than supermarket
stuff) and have an almost unlimited supply most of the year - the only
problems can occur with cabbage white butterflie caterpillars and a tiny
beetle (unidentified) which can both devastate the crop. Clearing off the
infected top growth usually encourages regrowth within a couple of days and
the water cleaning action continues virtually unaffected during this period.
Watercress should be cropped frequently to encourage maximum growth - if you
have no other uses it is a very good additive to a compost heap (seems to
work like a natural accelerator).

I also have a mixture of pond iris varieties and Papyrus in the header pond.
The irises make a great show, but are very invasive and require regular
root/tuber pruning to ensure a good flow of water. The papyrus is probably
the best of all in efficiency of nutrient removal, but is a little tender.

Pond plants are a no-go with my Koi - even overturned a large plastic
washing basket (about 3 ft by 2 feet and weghted down with bricks!) we tried
to use to grow water lilies!

Peter
--
Peter & Elizabeth Corser
Leighton Buzzard, UK