17th February 2019 - Cleaning the Pond

I love my pond, it was one of the first things I planned to put into my allotment when I got 85a, Mr L bought me it for my birthday and then installed it as a surprise while I was away with work.  When I first got it the water went a pea green colour and after trying a few things I got some daphnea from my neighbour which completely cleared it and has kept it clear.

I have a lovely marginal grass, a bullrush type plant, a waterlily and an iris (which has never flowered).  Last year I dropped a rock into the pond and while trying to fish it out again I noted 2 things.  The first was that the bottom of the pond had quite a lot of silt and dirt and the second was that there were little leech like creatures in that silt that managed to attach themselves to me (yuck!)

I'm pretty sure I've talked about the pond before but just as a recap, my pond does not have fish in it; it is solely a wildlife pond and I've been lucky enough to have both frogs and newts use it.  I also have seen dragonflies and various insects.  I've had birds and hedgehogs come for a drink and since installing the pond I have seen hardly any full sized slugs on my plot at all.

I genuinely believe that having a pond, if you have room, is the single most beneficial thing you can do for your garden and allotment.

And so to this weekend, I wanted to clear the pond before the frogs started spawning because I knew that once that started it would be another year before I could get it done.  I started by taking all of the plants out on Saturday and removing the mini fountain.  I genuinely couldn't believe how much they had spread.  The grass in the picture above was out of it's pot and the roots where as big as the plant above ground and it was really heavy (it actually turned out that it had grown around a brick that's I'd stood it on!!)  One of the things that's really important when you're taking anything out of the pond is putting it on the side to allow anything that needs to be in the water to make their way back in.  That was one of the reasons I wanted to get the plants out first because if there's any critters hiding that's where they'd be.

On Sunday I went down to the garden centre and got a pair of gloves so that I could get my hands into the pond without getting eaten by the bugs!  I started by taking out the bricks that I'd used to stand plants on and a terracotta pot that I'd used to stand the fountain on.  I also bought a mini rubble tub to put the stuff in that I pulled out of the pond.  

I then laid on my stomach and reached into the pond and scooped up all of the silt and dropped it straight into the tub.  There were 2 frogs in the pond who started to pop up and try to get away from me but of course because I had taken all the plants out they had nowhere to hide!  I managed to scoop them out with the net and pop them on the side.  I wasn't able to get all the silt out because I couldn't reach all the way to middle but it is definitely better than it was.

I needed to sort out all of the plants, as I've mentioned they had really spread.  I have no idea if what I've done is ok or not but I couldn't leave them as they were.  I essentially hacked away at them with my secateurs; I snipped off all of the roots that had grown outside of the pot and I removed any excess growth as well so that the roots I had left could support the plant.  I managed to split the grass although I still had to throw away more than I kept.  I had to do the same with the iris, bullrush and waterlily.  I re-potted the iris and waterlily into bigger pots partly so they had more room to grow but also because both of them had managed to grow sideways and so I wanted to straighten them up.

In the picture you can see that all of the stuff I pulled out of the pond I've left on the side and I weighted down the bucket to allow anything in there to climb back into the pond without it all ending up all over the place (or back in the pond!).  The water is still like a mud bath but one it settles I'm hoping it will clear again.  I do realise the irony of wanting everything to settle when I was trying to get it out but I think that unless I'm prepared to completely empty and scrub it I will always have to put up with some silt in the bottom of the pond; I think I'm going to try and clear it like this once a year to avoid it getting this bad again.

I do want to get another solar fountain and so that will be my next job once everything settles, I've also looked at some stuff to drop in the pond that will allegedly clear sludge so I might try that in the summer (it apparently works better when it's warm).

Until next time
Happy Gardening x