How to grow water soldier...

There is not so many people like friend of mine who constantly has to do something and keep her hands busy. Others prefer to enjoy quietly created surrounding instead of constantly weeding, cleaning, watering, changing places of plants. 

If you want a water garden or pond that will need minimum maintenance, you need lots of aquatic plants. Artificial ponds need lots of plantings in order to establish balance in the eco-system, so water can be filtered by plants and kept clean.

Water soldier grows very fast and will be very useful for forming dense mat of floating vegetation that will fill the pond. This interesting plant resembling aloe plant is floating in the water and sinking to the bottom for the winter. Sometimes it gets attached to the bottom with the long roots – which are reported growing even 5 m long.

It origins from Europe and Asia, but in some countries like Canada it’s on the list of invasive plant, as it spreads very fast in natural waters.

You can recognize water soldier by sharp edges similar to aloe plant. Plant  submerged in water or sinks below the surface as the leaves growing up to 40 cm  mature. It flowers with 3 white petal flowers, then developing around 20 seeds.

Water soldier is easy to grow and doesn’t have special requirements, when you bring it home, you just ‘toss’ it to the pond. Bigger plants will need some help, as they will be out of balance probably until next season. Water soldiers propagate by offsets which look like smaller version of the adult plants.