Great looking bog, Christy(?)!

Thanks. It's Cindy though....lol. I am just so amazed at how easy this bog is to maintain. I have lots of gardens throughout area surrounding my house and this bog is by far the easiest to keep gorgeous. I think I will start a new on in the spring. The fly traps have seeded and multiplied, as have the sundews. I think the pitchers have also seeded; I keep seeing new plants in spots where I never planted one. Very cool! Everything is blooming like crazy. It was an unusually cold winter and I worried that some of these plants may suffer, but I only lost one small one. The rest are blooming more heavily this year than they ever have in the past.

Cindy

WOW! Kudos! Look GREAT! Very nice job and photos!

You have an enviable setup, Cindy!

i am jealous.

Boy lucky you!

Wish I could do something like that in AZ, but the heat here will kill them.

The weeds make your bog look more natural.

Those are very happy looking plants!

Thanks so much. I do agree that some of the weeds look natural, like those little yellow flowers. I am not sure what they are and they don't appear to have any foliage, just the teeny blooms. Quite pretty actually! There are a few ferns that have come up also. Kind of surprising since the bog is in full sun, but they seem to be happy. The hardy sundew is beginning to get a little out of control as well, but I have not started pulling them yet. They have seeded quite freely in there. They are in full bloom right now, as are the fly traps. I was gone over the weekend and came home to a mass of newly sprouted weedy grass that I need to deal with this evening. At least they are pretty easy to pull when the bog is nice and wet.

I'm curious, how deep is your peat/sand mix?

The hole is about 18" deep in the center, but sort of tapers to that, shallower at the edges. Then there is appx 4" of pea gravel under the landscape fabric in the bottom. I'd guess the majority of the sand/peat mix is no deeper than 12" to 15" or so.

OUTSTANDING CINDY! Words are simply inadequate.
Do keep up the weeding and be sure not to let any grasses or sedges get in your bog as they would take over and crowd out your plants.

Thank you very much!

So is there any way to keep the weeds out besides hand-weeding? Would pre emergents be of any use? Preen can't be used next to my koi pond (where this bog is located) because it is deadly toxic to fish and also things would not reseed like they are, so I guess hand-weeding is the only solution. The worst weed I am dealing with is a grass of some sort. It grows tall, about the same height as the pitchers and the clumps are very flat. I wonder what that could be. It's very hard to pull and it seems to like to get up inside the clumps of pitcher plants. Right now the bed is covered in new seedlings of this annoying grass. I will flood the bog out tomorrow if it doesn't rain to soften everything up and start pulling them before they get too big.

WOW
that is beautiful was impressed until I read your zone AND acicic water . Could there be a more ideal place for a CP bog??
I started a "tropical bog" 4x5 feet 12 inches deep but with 10 inches of silt. allowed to dry or flood but not allowed to go completely dry. Using several species of tropical plants mostly aroids and iris .
Had a cold winter but lost nothing but everything had to start over.
Like you I have a similar problem WEEEDS lol Almost everything growing along the edge wants to grow there A surprising one was beach sunflower. Grows accross the water and roots on the other side!!
If you find any good ideas on the weeds?? Please share??
That is one beautiful bog garden!!! gary

Thanks Gary! One think I just discovered that seems to work very well for the grassy weeds is to flood the bog so it has some standing water in it and the soil is good and mooshy. Then I carefully scrap away all of the grasses, with their roots and some of the soil. These grasses all look like they are very shallow rooted, at least while they are small so this is working pretty well. It's easy to replace any missing peat once I get an area cleared out. I tried just pulling the grasses but the little ones are just too fragile and break off, leaving the root behind. Removing the roots with the soil might be the cure for 90% of them.

We have a low spot in our yard, which always stays moist for a while after rain. I asked my wife if I could do something like this, and she told me no, because shethinks that the "carniverous" plands will eat our two year old son, or our adult boxer...she is crazy!

Bythe way, that is gorgeous!

Hi
Thanks for the good laugh!!! You are kidding, right??
gary

Well, the weeds are gone. ALL of them! I ended up letting the bog dry enough so I could kneel down in it without sinking and started scraping away about 1" of the soil on top, along with all of the weed roots. Then I replaced the missing soil with some new peat and let it flood to wet the peat. It took a few hours but looks so much better now. I still need to replant several dozen sundews and some seedling pitcher plants and fly traps that came out with the weeds. It looks a little less full and natural now, but the weeds won't take over.

Hi
In my case the summer rains have arrived so will be no mre drying I guess Just noted that some Angelonia that came up from seed in the iris box are already twice as high as those in the soil. Guess if I have to have weeds those are nice ones.
Have NEVER read anywhere about culturing them in water
Go figure lol gary