Date Constructed: 1999

Larry H

As noted in the special announcement, the RCGC Annual Spring Symposium will be a day of special interest to members of GVPAKC. The featured program by Helen Nash is a wonderful opportunity to hear a water gardener extraordinair! Helen has authored numerous water gardening books including The Pond Doctor, Plants for Water Garden, and The Complete Pond Builder. She is also the publisher of Pond & Garden Magazine. Helen will be autographing books during the day.

GVPAKC will have a display of photos of members’ ponds in the foyer of the Eisenhart Auditorium at the Rochester Museum and Science Center during this event. We are in need of pictures of your pond to create an impressive display. This will be a tremendous opportunity to promote the club and hopefully increase our membership.

The Civic Garden Center is offering a group discount on tickets for the day. If 10 or more members from the club order tickets, the price is reduced from $45 to $35. Please let Larry Hursh know if you are interested in going

In addition to Helen Nash there are two other prominent speakers. The first is Barry Glick who will speak on "Perennials, Something Old, Something New, Something Yada, Yada, Yada. The second will be Joann Gruttadanrio presenting "Soil and Bed Preparation".

Doors open for this event at 8:15. The actual symposium will begin at 9:00 and conclude by 4:00 PM. Lunch is available at a cost of $10. There will also be a Gardener’s Marketplace where a variety of gardening related items and plants will be available.

We suggest that you take this opportunity to hear and perhaps meet one of the leading personalities in water gardening today! Helen has traveled the country photographing ponds and gardens as she goes. We are confident that you will walk away with many new and creative ideas of how to expand the presence of water in your garden! Join us!

(Reprinted from Ontario Water Garden Society Newsletter, Vol.2 #4)

Shopkeepers, Army Generals and car manufacturers have long marveled at the lotus plant. They do not admire the aquatic flower’s striking beauty or remarkable hardiness, but its leaves! They remain very clean.

Japanese researchers have now developed artificial, water-repellant films that mimic lotus leaves’ self-cleaning abilities - perhaps promising clearer shop windows, portable satellite receivers and windscreens.

Lotus (Nelumbo) leaves keep themselves spotless because countless tiny projections, coated with water-repellent wax, cover their surface. Water cannot spread out on these leaves so it rolls around as droplets, removing dirt and grime as it goes. Chemists and engineers have attempted to copy this ‘lotus-effect’ (or ‘super-hydrophobicity’) for decades.

Now, Toshiya Watanabe of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues say they have developed the first transparent, super-hydrophobic films that self-clean over long lifetimes. The films provide "a great opportunity" to develop lotus-effect coatings for various industrial items, the researchers report in Langmuir. The new technology might stop problematic water films building up on flat surfaces.

Artificial hydrophobic surfaces must have contact angles greater than 150 degrees to earn a 'super' prefix. The biggest problem is usually keeping the film surface clean - grimy stains reduce the surface contact angle, allowing water to spread out.

Lotus leaves do not have this problem because they continuously replace their waxy layer. ‘Since the metabolic mechanism of lotus leaves is difficult to duplicate, practical applications of super-hydrophobic surfaces have been limited." Watanabe’s group say the new film cleans itself - but the researchers are not entirely sure how.

Mixing titanium oxide into the film significantly alters how quickly stains build up. This is probably because titanium oxide reacts with dirt particles under ultraviolet light. But other researchers have previously shown that this ‘photo-catalysis’ process wrecks artificial water-repellent surfaces, bringing contact-angle and hydrophobicity crashing down. So how do the new films escape this fate?

The answer seems to lie in the titanium oxide concentration. To investigate, the team covered glass plates with films containing different amounts of titanium oxide and left them on the roof of a Tokyo building for over two months. Stains quickly built up on the films containing twenty per cent titanium oxide but those with just two per cent stayed clean and water-repellant, outperforming films with no titanium oxide at all. The researchers cannot explain exactly how the lower amount of titanium oxide offers cleaning protection without reducing film contact angle, although they say that the relative size of the particles involved is probably important.

By Larry Nau

The Genesee Valley Pond and Koi Club has been asked to "entertain" Helen Nash on Saturday evening, March 31^st, after the Symposium. Indeed it would be an honor and an excellent opportunity to meet and learn from one of the leaders of water gardening in the United States.

At this point in time plans are still being formulated. One option is to take Helen to dinner at an area restaurant, which has a private room. Another possibility is to meet at the Civic Garden Center and have food brought in. Lastly if only a handful of people are available to be with us then we may opt to meet at someone’s home. Anyone have a good recipe for lotus tubers? J

Any GVPAKC member who may be interested in joining us on Saturday night should contact Larry Hursh or Larry Nau as soon as possible. We want to extend the invitation to all members whether you attend the Symposium or not! What are final plans will be will depend on how many people are interested. I have spoke with Helen Nash and she is excited to have a chance to meet and interact with the water gardeners of Western New York!

It has been a while since we have ordered GVPAKC shirts or jackets. We are planning to place an order in the next week. If you would like to purchase a club "polo" shirt for $18 or a club jacket for $40 please contact Larry Nau at 293-1639. Either item will have the club logo embroidered on it. Samples may be seen at Friday’s meeting.

Gardenscape at the Dome Arena on March 15^th to the 18^th.

By Jo Anne and Norm J.

Check out our new site located at Genesee Gateway, which serves other non-profit organizations in our area.

Have you wanted to interest a new member in coming to our meetings, or tried to give someone directions to the Castle? Visit the Main Page. You’ll find an introduction to the club and a link to Mapquest.

If you can’t remember the topic of the next meeting or the date of the Pond Tour this year, a click of your mouse will take you to the Calendar of Events.

Would you like to reread a special article in the newsletter, but can’t find your copy? Current and past Newsletters are posted here.

Have you taken pictures of your pond, plants or fish you’d like to share? They can be posted along with other members’ Pond Photos.

You might be surprised to find a picture of your pond already out there on the site. Revisit the 2000 Pond Tour. If your pond was on the tour and it is not included, please send a picture so the virtual tour will be complete.

If you are interested in other clubs, suppliers, and pond sites, you can find more information by choosing Pond and Koi Links. Your personal website can be added here.

It is your website, so let me know what you would like added or changed. If you would like your personal website included in the Pond and Koi Links, please send your address. You can leave a message for me, Norm J., by clicking Webmaster on the Main Page.

By Larry Nau

Last month I reported on the difficulty some manufacturers were encountering on importing their fish foods from Europe. At the beginning of this year the US Department of Agriculture sent out notification that prohibits the importation of "rendered animal protein product, regardless of species". The intention of the directive is to ensure that no products imported from Europe get into cattle feed or any part of the US food chain. The USDA has said that the prohibition covers food for pets, including fish foods.

As of this date the USDA is permitting Tetra to import their flaked foods from Germany. However the embargo is still in place for all extruded pellets or sticks which Tetra makes. Unfortunately the plant in Germany which makes this extruded food can not be certified to the limits which the USDA has required. Therefore extruded food can not be imported into the USA.

What does this mean? With the exception of Tetra Pond Fish Flake Food, all the other Tetra Pond Foods are extruded pellets! Therefore may not be imported into the USA. Everyone must realize that Tetra is the brand name in fish food. They have tremendous recognition and brand loyalty. Tetra sells more pond food than all the other manufacturers combined! Suddenly they are apparently no longer in the marketplace!

What will happen next? Tetra is still trying to certify its plant in Germany with the USDA. However, some claim this particular plant may never be approved. Tetra may try to start production of its pond foods here on US soil. This of course takes time and planning. Already Pet Stores and Garden Centers across the country have placed their orders for pond food, yet there is nothing to be shipped from Tetra. Other manufacturers will feel the sudden demands placed on them to meet orders which will surely dramatically increase.

While it’s impossible to predict the future, this may be a "tight" year to purchase pond foods. If Tetra can not offer any of its pond foods this season to the marketplace it will be a challenge for the other manufacturers to make up the difference. Most likely across the country, koi will be waking up to different foods being offered to them as the stir from their winter slumber!

The Genesee Valley Pond and Koi Club has joined the International Water Lily and Water Gardening Society as an affiliated Society. We are now part of an organization which has members from more than 30 countries. The IWGS is a non-profit association dedicated to the furtherance of all aspects of water gardening by the exchange of the latest and best information on water gardening throughout the world. Members include hobbyists, commercial growers, hybridizers and botanical garden and college professionals. The IWGS is the International Registrar for the genera Nymphaea and Nelumbo (water lilies and lotus)

Look for the current copy of the quarterly Water Garden Journal in our library.