Spring is one of my favorite times of the year, with the cold weather slowly being replaced with the warm, the greening of the trees, and of course the start of the gardening season. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my backyard tilling soil, mixing in compost, and otherwise prepping my beds.

I’ve also sowed several seeds a few weeks ago, which are now beginning to spring to life. I got the Spinach in a little bit late, but the first real leaves are beginning to show up on my plants. Other gardeners have told me that I should sow Spinach seeds in the fall to have an even earlier crop. That’s on my to-do list for this fall.

Our chives are always one of the first things to pop up in the spring, and now they’re fully grown in. Our oregano, tarragon, mint, thyme, and sage have also sprung back to life from the winter. Unfortunately, 3 feet of snow seemed to kill our rosemary, so we’ll have to replace that soon.

I’ve sowed the seeds for a couple of root vegetables, Dragon Carrots (purple carrots) and beets. Both are popping up and starting their growth. I also have some swiss chard and several lettuces in the ground.

After planting our small strawberry patch 3 years ago, I’m hopefully that this year will finally be the year we have a decent harvest. The plants all look very healthy, with a lot of flowers. Since we do only have a small area dedicated to them, I need to cover them with some bird netting, as I believe the birds were the main consumers of the berries last year.

I love watching our vines spring back up after reseeding themselves from the previous year. Yesterday, I spotted the first string bean shoot emerging from the soil, and our snap peas (pictured above) started popping up a couple weeks ago. I put a couple cucumber and squash plants in the ground to try and get an early start on them, covering the plants at night, but it’s still too cool for them to really take off it seems. Either way, it’s so exciting to be out in the garden, watching for new surprises everyday. The only downside: my aquariums suffer from a bit of neglect. I’d love to hear what you’re planting in the comments section!

I haven’t updated this tank log since January, but my 75G is finally grown in to about where I want it. Unfortunately, the foreground (Glossostigma elatinoides) is way past its prime. I’m debating whether to leave the aquascape in place, and just replant the foreground, or to rip everything out and try something fresh. I have some nice manzanita branches that I’d like to try in here eventually.

Click for larger version

The Angelfish in this tank are really doing fabulously. They have probably doubled in size since I got them, and are incredibly personable fish. Whenever I enter the room, the fish swim straight up to the glass, gliding back and forth to follow me around the room. I couldn’t be more pleased with them. I still haven’t really spent much time to figure out other schooling tankmates for the Angels, but I’m sure I will find something eventually. Comments/critique always welcome on the aquascape!

A couple weekends ago, GWAPA, our local aquatic plant club, held its first ever hardscaping workshop for its members. Twenty-ten is the year of the aquascape in GWAPA, as we are doing a whole series of meetings stepping thru the ins-and-outs of aquascaping, culminating in an aquascaping contest. The first meeting in this series was about setting up the hardscape (rocks/wood).

The club provided buckets of rocks and a large box of manzanita so that our members could get their hands dirty in several 10G aquariums we had setup. The idea was to provide the materials for folks to be creative, while having more experienced aquascapers in the room to assist and give pointers.

I had the privilege of doing a short presentation at the beginning of the meeting, where I showcased a number of award-winning aquascapes and pointed out how the hardscape was the foundation for why they were successful.

Our members produced a variety of different hardscapes. Some were rockscapes like the one above, using locally collected slate.

Others decided to mix manzanita and slate in their tanks. It’s not hard to figure out where this member would have planted this hardscape, leaving a path down the middle.

I was happy to see lots of collaboration among members when working on their hardscapes. Personally, I’ve found it very beneficial to aquascape by committee so because other folks can point out potential pitfalls that I would have otherwise missed.

In addition to the slate, we also had some locally collected quartz-based rock, which looks very nice in an aquascape with a bright sand foreground.

In the end, we auctioned off all of the manzanita and aquariums at reasonable prices. The auction itself was pretty sizable, and overall, I think the workshop was a success. Has your club ever done anything like this? I’d love to hear other similar types of experiences in the comments…

Last fall, a couple GWAPA members got together at Paul’s house to help him aquascape his 90G aquarium. To remind you, just after planting, the new aquascape looked like this below. Obviously, the initial planting did not feature many stems in the background.

Just after planting...

Now, several month later, the tank has really grown in. Paul made a few minor adjustments to the original placement of the wood in the aquarium, which I think now looks better than one day one. The foreground is growing in very nicely, and the Sagittaria subulata in the middle background is adding a very nice jungle look. The Cryptocoryne looks especially healthy in this aquarium.

Currently...

I think the hardscape, foreground, and mid-ground look pretty good. The background looks good, but I probably took the picture about a week past its prime. I think that when Paul trims the stem plants, and they grow back up to about 3-4 inches above the tallest rock, it’ll be perfect. What does everyone else think of this aquascape? I will pass any comments onto Paul…

This weekend I decided to rescape my 20H aquaruim. Previously, I had been running this as a Riparium, but while I really did enjoy setting up the Riparium, I was ready to go back to a more traditional aquascape. In addition, I am doing a 20H aquascaping demonstration this weekend, and was told that I would have bogwood to use, so I wanted to practice a little bit in these dimensions.

I started by setting up the hardscape using a combination of African bogwood and slate. I was going for a large broken root system look in some form of a loose mound setup.

I also wanted to keep this aquarium somewhat low-tech using plants I had on hand, so I pulled out some standby Trident Java Fern, Anubias barteri var. ‘coffeefolia’, and assorted Cryptocoryne.

In the foreground I placed Ranalisma rostrata, and in the background I used Blyxa aubertii and Rotala sp. ‘Hra’. Of all of the plants in this tank, I would probably replace the Anubias with a smaller nana or petite variety, as the coffeefolia is a little bit too large. I should also probably tie some moss to the wood to make it a little bit softer.

Above is the aquarium shortly after filling it up. It’s definitely not the best aquascape I’ve ever done, but for simply toying around for a little while, I’m not too disappointed with it. Comments welcome!