Maintaining a Garden Pond

Unknown

My friend called me up earlier and wondered if I could help him out. I linked him to my other thread regarding the state of my own garden pond, and he was hoping that I could post something on here for him with a few questions about his own pond Maybe you can help out, as I have no idea what to do. I snapped a few pictures on my HTC when I was at his house, trying to get everything in. Sorry for the shadows, blame the sun.

Here's a picture of the pond. As you can see, its looking very overgrown by reeds and those lily-pad things which sometimes flower in the sunshine.



Here's a closer shot of the section on the left of the pond, which has a lot of lily pads in. It's also where the majority of accessible water is, as the part which is overgrown with reeds and grass is all boggy. I took a bucket and filled it up with the pond water, and there was a FUCK load of little crawly bugs in there. I assume this is what other creatures like to eat, so the pond is a great food source for other animals. The general structure of the pond is good, with a lot of holes and hiding places under the rocks which surround it. At the back of the pond is a little undercut which you can see in the picture. I seem to remember frogs hanging out under there in previous years - when we were little kids, I used to come to this guys house and pick up the frogs



Here is a picture of the section to the right of the pond, featuring... A shit load of reeds, engulfing a patch of grass in the middle of a boggy mud patch. I think this part of the pond must be shallower than the rest as the water level isn't very high here. Either that or the plants are sucking up all the water. What the fuck should we do with this section? Should we clear out all the reeds and grass? Needless to say, this area of the pond is the one which concerns me the most Help!



Finally, I got a picture of the area surrounding the pond. It's full of greenery, including plenty of leafy plants, some old rotten logs, a few hiding places for animals to get under and there's even an old Christmas tree in a pot to the right of the image :facepalm: I think it could use a few more plants, IMO. But what do you think?



Just so you know, it's a pond with a liner in. The liner has a hole in though :facepalm: This means that the water drains out frequently, and they just fill it up with the hose every so often. I'm not sure if this is good/bad for the pond life though, but it doesn't seem to be a problem.

buddha

Might want to go in and thin out a lot of those plant, and get rid of some of the muddy shit, eventually as dirt gets blown in among other things the pond will cease to exist. If the water is ok I wouldn't drain any out, but you might want to think about plugging that hole also. Is there a pump or anything to circulate the water if it isn't getting a refill every so often? Try to keep the water about 50/50 plants and open water.

buddha

Was going to write that guide on ponds and stuff, but I had to reformat and I lost my outline, got to start from scratch. BAH

dr rocker

I would pretty much leave it as it is. It is a very good source of margin habbitat - a one that is very often lost on most water by mans interference with them. I would scrupiously weed the pathway next to it - try and set its natural state off against very tidy look. I would also get that bramble out before it grows under the liner and minces it.

If you really are of a mind to clean it out, I would drain it, remove and save the plants, dig the crap out and a little bit more and puddle clay into it and do away with a man made liner. Put water in, wait a week for it to settle and put the plants back in. It is nice habbitat.

Burn

Filling it up with a hose is a bad idea. Water straight from the hose has chlorine in it, which will effectively kill all forms of fragile pond life, and, in high amounts, less fragile forms of life.

My idea would be to stock it with small, easily breeding fish. Do they have guppies or mosquito fish over there? Gold fish might also be a nice touch.

Unknown

I'll tell him to remove that bramble asap - I didn't actually see it as a problem but I guess that's what I get for being a pond-noob. I won't be cleaning it out or removing any water, and I don't think my friend can actually be bothered with all the hassle right now anyway. I'll let him know that it's actually not a bad pond

Thanks for your advice Dr Rocker, I was actually hoping you'd get in on this thread :thumbsup:

As for Buddha's advice, you actually gave me an idea. There's a lot of dirt around the pond and I think that a lot of it gets blown in either by wind or when there's a storm. Maybe we can take a look at it, and sort it out so that the dirt doesn't get into the water.

buddha

I still think you should thin out the plants, The roots of the plants are what help to clean and filter the water, and if water can't circulate through them freely, they can't do their job.

dr rocker

The dirt is brought by the plants - old bits of plant that fall in the pond and leaves and dust that blow in - the reeds I bet get full of leaves in Autumn and no one sees to clean the leaves from the reed or those floating on the water. You have to take a lot of the blow in out, but let some remain to nourish the pond - its how the plants and micro-organisms get nutrients, from things that have blown in from outside - those things being at the bottom of the food chain and so things further up the food chain need them.

It is a hard thing to find the natural balence for how much to remove each year, but as the pond it silited up it has a lot of nute reserves in anyway, you can easily afford to remove 50% of the silt without worry of overly damaging the plants ability to sustain itself. The silt itself to some one like me is gold. A very good mix of silt particals and organic matter. Back in the day when in the UK we were up for diverting rivers and making dams and shit, a lot of silt was put on farmland. Some of the best farmland in the UK has been built of silt.

I would save any silt you dig out, drain it, dry it and screen it and mix it 50/50 with a medium compost and you will have something that you could never buy in the shops. I would use it as a potting on compost rather than a sowing compost.

When he gets the bramble out, get the lot. Anything that looks white or like live or semi live wood will grow back. Thread roots wil not. Anything over 2mm thick needs to come out. I would however, brush the leaves with glyphosate. It is what I consider to be the least damaging to long term ecology in terms of weed killers. It is non selective, but be aware it is pretty much non selective. Also, you have to deal with the environment, help the soil ect as you have killed a lot of things in that ecology and anything that has a symbiotic or hierarchical relationship with that plant will suffer. Killing weeds in such manner can lead initially to a small over population of garden worms and then a huge crash when their store of organic matter is worn out. You will then get endemic disease in the worms - you do not want this, for however a successful a gardener you can ever hope to be, the humble earthworm is born a better gardener than that.

That included, the use of glyphosate in the UK around any permenant or semi perminant holding of water is strictly reculated - it is mandadory that you must take steps to prevent it going into water if you use it where it could get into water. The best way I have found to use glyphosate around water is the three glove dip. A pair of leather riggers gloves, then rubber gloves, then oversize wool gloves.

The rigger gloves are the tought kind of rough leather, but still let you remain dextrous. The rubber gloves, the more professional the better. If you want to be super safe, use nitrile gloves and change them every 4 minutes, but I am comfortable with the kind of thick rubber gloves you can get for fucking around with chemicals in a lab. I started buying mine for taking drive train components apart on my truck that contained EPO oil - its like stinky pinky cancer inducing gear oil - if it protects me from that shit then I think it protects me enough from glyposate.

Put the gloves on in that order, soak and rinse out the glove in glyphosate and put it on, then stroke the plant from the base up. Usual precautions to be followed, I dont want to go into all the regs, you have to use common sense arounds spills, disposal, cleaning yourself, exposure times and so on, but although its use around water is legally restricted, it is quite legal for the layman to do it as long as they are on their own land and not seeking payment if they could demonstrate an understanding in practice of what they are doing.

When you get into most UK regs on building and evironments, I have always found anyone who is responisble works to what would be gold standard rather than meeting the regs. Most trades are regulated by 'minimum coptetence' rather than how much of a good, longterm job the individual does. Upon such time this is changed, you are better off reading and understanding regs and then reading the regulation recomendations and working to them as a minimum.

Basically, herbicide law for the man at home is so strict that if you do it anything other than by the book and fuck something up, you could see laws enacted for their banning for home use. So make sure you know what you are doing if you go down that route.

I learned how to use the stuff safe so you can learn it too.