This is the first time ever for growing a lotus in our yard. I added it to the duck pool water storage as a part of a broader experiment.
The experiment is a water-re-use project came about because the duck’s ‘pond’ is 30 gallons and gets changed at least every other day. (They poop a lot!) That’s also a lot of water. Meanwhile the garden beds use 25 gallons at least per day on a warm day – not to mention that there are shrubs and trees to water.
The duck water is high in nitrogen and there is some reason be concerned that we might overfeed some of our plants, but I am keeping an eye on them and hopefully if we see symptoms of trouble, using fresh water would be the fix.
Now, when we change the duck water, we pump it into a 100 gallon stock tank where the lotus is living. I am using a pond filter on the pump intake to avoid taking up too much of the sludge at the bottom of the pool, but I still get a bit of it. The remaining sludge goes on the compost pile. (We just added a new bay)
Water in the stock tank breaks down to feed the lotus. I am considering adding some fish to the mix to control possible mosquitoes that might be falling in love and getting ideas about starting families. I also expect algae may be a recurring problem so I’ll watch for that as well.
Anyway, the water sits in the stock tank with the lotus and every non-rainy morning, I pull out about 5 large buckets of water and stage them around the raised beds. Shelly waters the plants at the base with a bucket. We don’t use duck water on our leafy veggies like lettuce or spinach but most everything else gets the tea.
