pond weeds parrots feather and slender pond weed
Having a pond is great for relaxation, visual pleasure, watching wildlife, fishing swimming and more. But what happens when a plants, wanted or not become more of a nuisance than what it was intended for?
Where do they come from? Sometime we may plant something with the intent of helping the pond ecosystem, which they do but left alone and not maintained they can over take the pond. Not knowing what plants to plant can be a problem as well if you take them from a swamp or another water body you could end up with an invasive species of plant.
Plants and weeds can be brought into the pond by wildlife as well. Seeds, partial plants and waste from the wildlife can transport unwanted plants and weeds in the pond.
So now the pond is over taken by plant and weeds what do you do? The typical reaction is to use a chemical to kill the plants. That’s great but what other damages may happen in the process? One thing for sure is now all that plant material is going to die, consume dissolved oxygen and decay on the bottom of the pond creating muck and sludge and more nutrients for more weeds to grow. Same thing with algae it just keeps coming back.
What if you have a special plant you want to keep in the pond, but want to get rid of the unwanted plants and weeds? Chemicals are out of the question now and your left with physical removal using a weed cutter and rake, a Lake Mower or even the Lake Bottom Blanket to smother out the plants.
pond weeds piles of parrots feather
Depending on the plant / weed a biological option would be the Tri Ploid Grass Carp. These carp are fixed so they cannot reproduce, many states require you to have a permit to purchase these carp and able to prove they cannot escape your pond. If they do they create a huge danger to our native fish by consuming the native plants in streams or lakes leaving the native fish nothing to eat, spawn by or use for habitat.
This brings us to our video of pond weeding/pond cleaning. This pond has Lotus which is a plant that is wanted to stay in the pond. The other plants are not wanted since they end up taking over the water surface ruining the view and kayaking. We used the Lake Mower the first time for Parrots Feather and the second time we used mainly the Weed Cutter and Lake Rake to remove the slender pond weed.
One thing to remember is we are just cutting the weeds and plants and not really able to get them by the roots. So it is just like mowing the lawn, eventually you may need to get back out there and cut them again. The video shows a two month stretch and different plants / weeds that came into play.
