Ever wondered what to do with that big mess after you've mowed down your UG lawn??

Utricularia graminifolia makes a wonderful grass-like foreground in a planted aquarium. I have it mainly in my 5.5g Innocent Garden aquarium. That tank has higher light and higher concentration of CO2 being pumped in. I have placed it in my lower light aquariums, it did live, however it eventually uprooted itself and is now a floating clump exploring around the tanks. I also noticed the UG in my 5.5g stretching towards the light and can see the roots being exposed, so I thought maybe it is time to mow this baby down, to help get some more light to the bottom of the leaves.

Well if you ever mowed down a UG carpet, you know what a huge mess it makes... tons of green leafy blades just floating all over the surface of the water. And if you got some serious water circulation, this mess isn't just at the surface of the water; it's all over the tank getting caught onto other plants and equipment! I looked at these wonderful looking leaves and wondered if there was something useful I could do with them rather than netting all the leaves and just tossing them into the trash.

So I took several pinches of the mess and stuck some on top of the biomax in my Aquaclear 20. There it would stay nice and wet, and not get swept away by the current. I did notice some growth over the several weeks I had it there, and finally when I decided to clean my filter just a few days ago, I took out the Biomax and 'lo and behold the UG had indeed grew and rooted and was clinging on for dear life onto the Biomax baggie.

Well what about the rest of the leaves? Again, I didn't want to waste such nice looking leaves! Not only did I salvage those few pinches on to the filter, but I used my fish net and swept out as much of the leaves I could. I prepared a plastic container with a mix of sphagnum peat moss and sand on the bottom. I also put some lava rocks on that right corner and covered it with some peat/sand. I sprayed the peat with lots of tap water to get it moist, it sure is hard to get peat wet again after it's been dried. Well after a while I got it wet enough so I spread the UG clippings all over the peat. I also had a trimming of Limnophila aromatica so I stuck that in the opposite corner to the lava rocks. Although you do not see the L. aromatica, it has grown fairly well and needs to be trimmed since then it has reached the top and is being inhibited to grow taller by the plastic wrap!

I made sure everything was fairly moist and then covered the container with plastic wrap and stuck it next to a window for some natural sunlight since I have no spare light fixtures. I started this "project" on September 1, 2011 and today I took some pictures for my final results.

As you can see, there has been quite some growth, it looks pretty and 'wild' I think. The original trimmed leaves sent out roots which then sent out new leaves.

This is a picture of a trimmed leaf that got stuck to the wall and I was too lazy to shove it down to the dirt. As you can see, root-like structure has also formed!

So if you have a spare container, some peat and sand, and a windowsill; and want something to do with your mess of UG clippings then you can either grow them emersed, or just stick it in your filter (if you got one similar to mine) and grow some extra UG submersed! Never ending supply of UG, yay!

Gardening

Well I haven't been keeping track of my aquariums because I was very busy tilling a plot of land in my backyard. I plan on splitting the plot in half; half for food-type plants and the other half for plants that attract butterflies and bees. This plot hasn't been touched for at least 16 years, and only has ugly Creeping Junipers, weeds and very evil Siberian Elm saplings in the ground. So not only are there a bunch of pain in the ass plants to remove but the ground is rock hard! Thank you Colorado, for having rock hard clay soil /sarcasm.

Anyways, I began watering the area for 15 minutes a day for a few days to help soften up the ground. I pulled up the Creeping Junipers and the weed cloth. Then to soften and crumble the ground I used a mattock with a three-prong and axe head. The ground was okay to work with, but the painful frustrating part was trying to remove the roots of the Creeping Junipers and the Siberian Elm saplings, of which both kinds of plants were extremely established. Getting them out completely was impossible, so I dug as deep as possible and yanked out what I could. I am contemplating on using some Round-Up and squirting it on the roots so hopefully they die and I don't have to worry about these evil plants sending up new shoots in the next Spring.

 

It is such hard work to get to these evil roots. I hope in the end all my back-breaking work will pay off, in future I will probably have some back problems because of this. I am still not done with getting rid of all these roots, there are just so many. Sometimes it is very frustrating and I kinda wished to do a raised garden bed, but my parents don't want me to since they think I'll lose interest after a season.