Duckweed

my friend The Pond Lady has a duckweed problem inside her greenhouse ponds where she
grows her lotus and water lilies. she broadcasts the fertilizer. she uses something
like a protein skimmer to remove the excess duckweed (it shades and cools the water
too much and uses too much of the fert.
so duckweed grows on ponds with fertilizer. INgrid

Galen Hekhuis wrote:

Some time ago I asked about duckweed, as I didn't know if it should be
introduced to the pond by my house. That question has been resolved. I
don't know exactly how (ducks or wind or something) but I have duckweed
growing in my pond now. My brother tells me duckweed is a sign of a
healthy pond, in that it can't grow in really foul water. Reading about it
a bit, it seems that it is fairly good at cleaning up metals like copper
and cadmium, but not too terrific at stuff like lead or nickel. It does a
dandy job on organic type toxins, and that "recent research shows that
duckweeds actively remove and metabolize certain pesticides and industrial
wastes." I'm impressed.

Should I be worried or doing something? I'm quite content to have a bunch
of duckweed, I just wonder if I will eternally curse the day I let the
duckweed into my pond. There is this stuff called "Sonic" that is supposed
to completely kill the duckweed (and any other floating plant) but be
harmless to frogs, fish, and rooted plants. Being as how I'm not growing
anything in the pond right now (except frogs) now would be an ideal time to
deal with the duckweed, if indeed it needs to be dealt with.

I've got an unlined pond about 30 feet in diameter now, and about 3 feet
deep (it used to be about 50 feet in diameter, and about 5 feet deep, but
we haven't had hardly any rain at all this spring). I have a bubble type
aerator in it (thanks to Roy's advice, but he says he has me in his kill
file for some reason, so someone will have to tell him I guess) and not
much else (it used to be a garbage pit, I had a bulldozer clean it out, so
it's like starting from scratch). I don't plan to have any fish, although
if I can catch some of those mosquito eating fish (I forget the name) that
live in the back pond I'll be "stocking" the pond by the house with some of
those.

So how do folks feel about duckweed, should it stay or should it go?

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
Illiterate? Write for FREE help



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