the hyacinths i have now are very flat and horizontal; compared to pictures of hyacinths that are slim, tall, and vertical.
ive found out that confining them with a ring will cause them to grow up and flower, and people have suggestd using a hose or something but;

will a say, 7 inch diameter plastic flower pot work?-for confining one or two plants?

thnks.

I have tried to confine minewhich worked. They gre and really spread out to become quite large last summer. They did not really grow very upright either. Maybe there are different types of water lillies. I think maybe a flower pot would work fairly well. Good luck

Excuse me I meant to say water hyacinth, not lillies.

Go to Menard's or Lowes or similar store and get some half inch pvc water pipe and 4 ninety degree angle connector and some pvc cement. Cut and glue the pipe and connectors into a square or rectangle. This square or rectangle will float nicely in the pond and contain your plants. I've also use this method to create a feeding ring to contain fish food while the fish eat. This prevents the food from floating away from the fish with the slight current caused by the skimmer.

This is picture of a small containment ring in my pond.

To make another containment area, I attached cupscrews to rocks on the sides of the pond at water level and attahed monofilament fishing line to the cuphooks, creating an invisible line at water level that contains the plants to the area defined by the fishing line. If the line is just below water level, the line is even less visible, but still contains the plants because the hanging plant roots catch on the lline.

Don

I confine my hyacinth with a loop of old garden hose. They don't stay in there though because the fish are always moving it around. I have a floating plant protector which protects the plants from below. I start my water hyacinth and water lettuce in there at first before they start growing.

You can try growing the water hyacinth in a pot. They would certainly be confined which encourages flowering but I don't know if they'd get enough nutrients in the water. The water might just stagnate as well. If you put fresh pond water in there every few days, that should work.

If you look closely at the picture in my post, you can see a monofilament fish line attached to the floating waterpipe. This keeps the fish and turtles from moving the containment around the pond (as well as the current in the pond)

Don

Some people use Hula Hoops also. Great idea, fishing line, since it would look more natural. Have to try that this year.

FM3

Love the guard dog idea! :D

R3d

Some guard dog. His name is Bernie and he'd lick you to death.

Don

ooo. thanks for the cool ideas.

i have an about a half-barrel sized container that holds a water lily and some hyacinths, but i dont want the hyacinths to take over the water lily! a hula hoop is about the size of the whole container...

so thats why i wondered if a floating plastic flower pot would do. ill try.

i also have a standard five gallon bucket filter, for my turtle tub, with a few small hyacinths growing on the top,

perhaps those will grow vertical...but they only have a few inches of water, so im not too sure.

Here is my 2 cents. :)

I had some leftover tubing that I had used to connect the pump to the spitter in my pond. The tubing looks like this:
http://www.aqua-mart.com/blvitu.html
I just cut a length, made a circle and zip tied the ends together. It worked great [I thought anyway] b/c is was black, it wasn't easily seen and once the plants grew some you couldn't see it at all. It did float around the pond some but wasn't a problem for me b/c my pond is so small.
KK turned me on to using zip ties in the pond to secure stuff. It works great just make sure that there are no sharp ends where you snip off the tie. I use a lighter to heat the end of the tie after I cut it off to melt the end a little. You don't want your fishy getting cut on them!

Tia

I used that same black tubing and heated one end a little and just stuffed the other end inside to make a ring............unfortunately the fishies had all the hyacinths pretty much eaten by the end of last year. I'm going to try to undo the ring and thread a piece of netting on it before I put it back together this year. My pond is short on shade and the fish hang around under there, so it's no wonder they eat the hyacinths.