Got the Pond Pearls in.
As I said earlier, when I placed the order, the on-line info was not available. It is there now. What is says on-line differs a little from the print material that came with the fertilizer, not by much. On-line says it is 15-10-10, the printed version call is 15-10-12. I'm sure that will be cleared up over time.
Also, the on-line says it can be used "for the enitre growing season (6-9 months)", where the print material says, "5-6 Month Continuous Feeding." Again, not quite the same, but not too different. Any any event, the local weather conditons will vary enough to cover that difference due to the temp release components.
From the on-line, printed, and a telephone conversation, the differences between Nutricote, sold as Red Devil plant food, is that the Nutricote is pretty much all temperature released. With either, a temperature drop such as the end of the growing season, will cause the fertilzers to stop releasing the nutrients. And that is a helpful feature.
But Nutricote does take time, almost a month, before it starts releasing nutrients. Because of this, you need to add something else, such as a conventional pond tab, when planting. Pond Pearls is made up of many different sizes and colors of prills. These different prills have different binders and coatings. Some are primarily temperature release, others are mainly water released, and it seems that the different coatings mean some will release at different times throughout the growing season. Enough of it will release right away, so you do not need to use a pond tab during the initial planting. Here is a quote from the on-line material that was echoed in the phone call:
"Designed to promote strong green growth and rooting during the initial months of feeding; followed by, the remaining months of long-lasting blooms."
It goes on to say, "Repeat feeding application with AgSafe Aquatic-Tabs® or Aquatic-Spikes™ next season." But it seems to me that "next season," you will likely be re-potting anyway, possibly in a larger pot, you should be able to use the Pond Pearls again.
So, you need a tab to start a plant with Nutricote (Red Devil,) and from the print material, "After Pond-Pearls Application: Promote quick blooming using Aquatic-Tabs." This is not mentioned in the on-line material. But from the phone call, you should be able to get pretty good results over a growing season, with the Pond Pearls alone.
I don't know. But I do have plenty of the Pond Pearls and Nutricote on hand, along with my pond tabs, and plenty of plants to be planted. So, I'll have to keep some notes and decide just which way I'm going to go. I'll post what happens, either way. But this will take a while.
It was asked somewhere above about the size pots I'm using. I don't think I covered that!
Since I tend to experiment as I go, this year I'm generally starting with two of each variety. Especailly with tropicals, I plant one in a 1 gallon squat pot. This allows most all of them to reach a pretty good size, sometimes too big for the majority of my ponds which are 4X8 feet, about 2 feet deep. Also, it seems to me that the one gallon pot is probably the most common size used in ponds across the country.
The second plant is planted in a much smaller pot, some in 4 inch Lerio pots, some in 18 oz plastic cups, and some in 8 or nine ounce "Dixie Cups," ala the "Sean's Bonsai Method." (Sean, you really should trademark that!" These are planted this way for two reasons. One is to promote tuber production for next year's crop, the other reason is that plants grown in them grow large enough for fairly good sized pads, but not usually quite a large as the gallon pot plants, and they will still produce blooms, again not usually quite the size of the larger potted plants. Plants from the cups are a nice size for shipping as bare-root waterlilies. And you can grow a surprising number of them in smaller grow-out ponds.
I'm currently trying out small, rectangular food storage containers for the new hardy waterlilies. I hope to apply the same "Bonsai" techinques to produce a larger number of them in a small space, while the shape of the container will allow for good horizontal rhizome growth. And so far, so good!
In the past, I used 8 oz. desert cups for starting "plantlets," 1 gallon squat pots for initial grow-outs of those plants, and later, I planted many in Lerio's 2 1/2 gallon pots and many others in the Lerio 10 gallon pots. The latter produced some impressive waterlilies. My original mentor kept at least one each of his most common varieties in several 27 foot diameter ponds, each potten in a large pot made from half of a 50 gallon plastic drum. These made for some of the largest "non-Victoria" waterlilies I've ever seen. He had some slots cut in the top of those large pots for nylon webbing, as he used a digging attachment on his tractor to lift them in and out the pond for maintanance. (I won't be going that far!"
Mike S.
Spring Hill, FL
