I visited a local farm supply store today and they had a few water plants
left in a nasty tub outside. I paid $1.50 for a medium size clump of water
hyacinth which looks fairly healthy. For another $3.00 I got :

3 bunches of what they said is parrot's feather. One bunch is mostly green,
but verry straggly stems about three feet long with long roots on one end
and tiny new roots along the stems.. The other two bunches are shorter,
mostly brown with green tips, mostly black roots with a couple of new white
ones and small new roots along the stems.

10 tiny waterhyacinths with thick new root growth.

3 large and several small pieces of water lettuce with variable root
condition.

Assorted snails attached to the plants along with something green and
feathery that looks like the "seaweed" my children used to collect from the
swimming area at our local state park. There's a lot of this stuff, with
very very fine foliage.

Some tiny green stuff that I think from looking at pictures is probably
fairy moss., but they said fairy moss would be red. I asked the folks at
the farm store if it was duck weed and they said they don't sell duck weed
(sort of offended by that question they were, made me feel plumb ungrateful)

5 floating plants with lily pad like leaves that are about the size of a
penny, almost heart shaped. I thought the floating heart was larger? It's
not penny wort, I have some of that and it looks different.

So did I waste my $4.50? I really wanted something besides water lilies and
pickeral weed..

How do you plant parrot's feather and water hyacinth? I have a couple of
Helen Nash books, and one of them talks about lead strips in connection with
planting parrot's feather. It also talks about potting the water hyacinth.
I have seen posts here I think that say just to drop them in the pond.
Personally I prefer the BV method but will it work for these plants? I'm
new at this and don't want to make a major mess.

What about the fairy moss? Some places say the fish eat it, some say the
fish don't touch it? Should it be confined to a ring?

I put all of it in a kiddie pool to keep for a while, mostly because I want
to get all the snails off. I had those in an aquarium before--one snail
plus one month equals a million snails and ruined plant life. What else
should I do with the plants before adding them to the pond?

Our state agricultuaral extension service lists all of those plants as
noxious weeds and gives instructions on how to kill them. I want to keep
them alive, but I don't want them to take over the pond either. Which ones
are worst?

Comments and advice appreciated!