Weeding the Pond
Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Tuesday, 23rd September 2008
HIGH TIME to weed the pond to create some open water and give the oxygenating pondweeds
a chance. This floating water-weed, here piled up to allow water creatures to find
their way back into the pond, is one which I assume has been introduced to our garden
pond as a small fragment, perhaps on the feet of a visiting mallard. There are large
rafts of it, about ten feet across, along the quieter edge of the local canal. As
I pick it out, I separate any strands of pondweed I find and pop them back into the
water.
A word of advice: if you’ve invested in some long-armed gloves for pond work, don’t
leave them in a box in the garden shed; mine have had two holes - one in each glove
- nibbled in the tip of the rubberised fingers by some rogue rodent. I wore household
gloves inside them as I worked.
The iris, which now has seed-pods on its stems, has taken over about a quarter of
the pond, so I need to thin that out too. It has large, thick rhizomes, matted together
beneath the water, which are difficult to lift and divide.
