New Things In Your Pond Today...

Thought I would start one of these threads for our ponds...

Today in our pond the flag iris flowered...

Today in our pond the Moorhens are fighting the ducks and the coots again!

What a racket. The Moorhens will win, they always do....

Today in the pond we are minding for friends (it comes in a large pot!) we can see water lilies starting to grow. They told us it used to have a water lily but they thought it had died

Jaded Green wrote:Today in the pond we are minding for friends (it comes in a large pot!) we can see water lilies starting to grow. They told us it used to have a water lily but they thought it had died

...

Ponds come in all sorts of shapes & sizes, big pots are welcome, would love to hear more/see piccie...

Today in our pond one of the Moorhens died which means the eggs will as well as one of a pair can't do it all....

AngelinaJellyBeana wrote:Hmmm possibly a leak

The pond has gone down an alarming rate, it may just be due to no rain for ages but I don't remember it ever going down so much before and I'm getting a bit concerned.
(it's about 10ft x 10ft and probably 2 1/2 ft deep at the deep end)

It's been there 10 years and there's enough gunk at the bottom now to hopefully protect the liner but after rocks being thrown at the greenhouse last month, I'm wondering if something has made a hole in the liner.

Mind you, it will make it easier for me to clear out some of the overgrown irises before topping up with the hose. Just need to keep an eye on the taddies

I know lot of people that do it, but be wary of using hose water to top up with AJB, it may be worth looking at the weather forcast for this coming week first, although that is only a rumour that I heard last night.

I have been in deep thunking mode about how to get more water to mine & I'm probably going to take the runoff from my greenhouse...

I do realise not everyone can do this...

Spotted the first damsel flies of the year this morning, a male & female large red busy making little reds for next year...

Today I saw,

Whirligig beetle, oh how I love watching these simple little creatures, I almost enjoy watching them as much as newts.

I think it was a Brilliant Emerald dragonfly, unfortunately it flew off before the YSS could get the camera, & when it landed it was too far away.

A pair of common blue damselflies making more common blue damsel flies.

Various bees, & hover flies enjoying the flag iris.

No fish ...

Not bad for a 1 year old pond...

I was clearing the pond up a bit yesterday when I noticed tiny little beetles swimming around - less than 1/4" long, and metallic. They were really fun to watch, because they had such purpose, and it made you forget all the things you were supposed to be doing(!)

You've got whirligigs...

Oh - I'd always thought whirligigs were larger (perhaps I was thinking about diving beetles - I've seen pictures but didn't know how big they were) OH thinks that anything which stops me in my tracks for a few minutes must be good news! I can see why you like them then, Spar.

Don't put one in your hand by the way they can give quite a nip...

I would really appreciate some advice on pond maintenance. We have a small wildlife pond which was dug about 8 years ago. It has a PVC liner, and all the marginals and other plants are in removable containers (except the irises which seem to have grown into the banks!) Although I trim things and tidy it up annually, it has never been entirely emptied. Whenever I wonder if I should do this (in the autumn) the weather becomes cold and wet so i decide not to. Should I do this at all? It is a mass of frogs spawning at the moment, it doesn't smell, but has quite a bit of that annoying pond weed with tiny leaves, and quite a bit of sediment at the bottom. Any ideas?

Definitely don't clean it out now, Dandelion. I'm sure you weren't going to. As you say, Autumn is best but the weather can put you off - it does me!
My small pond only gets a complete clean out if I don't look after the plants properly and it gets clogged up. I made a mistake by choosing to plant native pond irises which are much too vigorous for anything but a small lake. They're gone now but seedlings are popping up everywhere.
My big pond went 15 years before I decided it needed an overhaul and I paid some younger stronger people to do the back breaking work last September.
Pond weed (like Elodea and Hornwort) can become a nuisance as all types that I know of can be a bit invasive but easy enough to pull out as long as you leave it lying on the edge for a few hours so any wee beasties can crawl back into the water.
Are you talking about oxygenating weed in the pond or duckweed which is the tiny leaves that float on the surface? Duckweed is very persistent, once there you never get rid of it all. A friend recommended a duckweed killing chemical from the Garden Centre but as I haven't got a real problem at the moment, I haven't used it yet.
Are certain amount of sludge is fine, lots of life is in there

It's the tiny annoying leaves which float on the surface. I quite like clearing out the other sort: it's rather satisfying to wind it round a stick, and it's relatively easy to do. But I've got the other sort! I didn't know you could get a chemical. Sometimes if the pond is frozen, I pull the sheet of ice out and it brings the weed with it, but as you never get all of it out, it spreads again.
I think I'll review a complete clean again in the autumn! Thanks for the advice.

Our pond used to get duckweed and the green slimey stuff. I used to skim it off with a garden rake and/or a net. Makes the compost heap hot up very nicely !

I do usually skim off the duckweed and wind the blanket weed out on a stick as I'm not keen on chemicals if not strictly necessary but it's true that you never get rid of duckweed altogether!

Newts in both our ponds!! The smaller pond has been here a long time though just in the process of refurbishing it. It had become very overgrown, mainly with a beautiful deep blue iris. That's all gone now, and started again with things that shouldn't take over too quickly. It's now officially the wildlife pond, and I introduced some tadpoles a few weeks ago. All the advice is that the frogs will find your pond - well they haven't. Not seen a frog anywhere near it for umpteen years. Watched a bird bathing on the shelf of stones earlier.

The top, larger pond is really just ornamental - stocked with gold and silver rudd. But for the first time ever, I saw a newt in there too this evening.

There will be damselflies in the summer, blue ones and red ones, and maybe a couple of dragonflies.

Freebird, that is great new(t)s Ahem!

I must spend a bit of time pond-gazing to see what's about. OH saw a newt in the big pond, not sure about any elsewhere though I do find them in damp places in the garden reasonably often.

I think we could do with some pictures of these ponds ...?

When and where do you see the newts? The only time I ever saw one was at night when i went out with a torch and saw it swimming in the pond when I lifted up a water lily leaf. They seem to be very shy.

I see them when they surface for air. Actually, I didn't know that and had to check with Mr Google and found out at the same time that they are predatory and eat tadpoles. So maybe I'm not going to be able to have frogs in the pond after all. We'll see.

I have newts and tadpoles in the pond - I've seen up to 6 newts simultaneously, and plenty of taddies make it to frogdom. Last year I had several great diving beetles to add to the mix. They are supposedly vicious predators but there were still newts and frogs too. They seem to find their own balance.

This is just work in progress and you only get to see the progress, not the messy bit! The pond is a preformed liner that has been in nearly 30 years. I would never, ever use one again because it is a complete pain in the backside to cover the edges of it. I've never been a fan of 'paved all around the edge' and have tried various things over the years, none of which have really worked.

This is part of the latest incarnation. The pond was massively overgrown, so the man cleared it out in the autumn. It's now very newly planted, home to some newts and hopefully (if the newts haven't eaten them all) some imported tadpoles which I've not seen since putting the frogspawn in the pond.



The partly submerged stony shelf is all balanced on a toughened glass shelf out of a cupboard, and was put there mainly for birds to drink and bathe, as well as for creatures to exit the pond. It has been an instant success for the birds at least.

The left side is just bits of broken paving that needed a home, but I've decided to try some toughish alpines to scramble over them and colonise the gaps. All a bit of an experiment - no point in putting pond edge type plants as there is no additional moisture here. A boggier bit towards the bottom of the pic for iris siberica and primulas and anything else I can lay my hands on.

The right hand and back of the pond still to be worked on. Since taking this pic I've made a log pile at the far end, again to shelter small creatures.

Decided not to have water lilies as the pond is in shade for a considerable part of the day. I like water hawthorn and find that lilies tend to crowd it out so am having just that, to see if it will do better on its own