Weeding the pond

This was the pond in the Hill Garden when we Heath Hands volunteers arrived for our session yesterday morning – a rather unattractive murky mass of algae and pond weed choking the wildlife in the pond and the plants. So it was more weeding for us – but this time pond weeding, a lot more fun. First with rakes to oik the weed out from both the open pond and, much more difficult, from between the plants – and then sifting through the slurp to rescue any pond life that we had pulled out and return it to base.

This is Ash with his extended rake and then Margaret trying to fish it out from between the reeds.

Margaret is a truly expert pond weeder – venturing out onto a somewhat dodgy reed island in pursuit the green gunge which had snuck into between the plants

– and here delicately  fishing out the tiny bits with her mini rake.

After an hour or so’s raking the edges of the pond were lined with heaps of sodden weed –

much of which was thick and tightly woven almost like material.

In fact I did stretch one bit out and tried to dry it out – having been charged with making earrings from it! But sadly, Ash’s over enthusiastic hose resoaked it at the end – so I left it to see if it would dry in the bothy overnight.

Rescuing the wildlife involved donning some rubber or latex gloves and carefully sifting through the weed. This, we thought, was a waterboatman.

We found loads of tiny snails and several newts. This one, when I found him, did not seem that keen to return to the pond….

This one got the message a lot quicker.

And finally, after two hours of happy work, a beautiful clean pond getting its final sluicing down. How long it will stay beautifully clean is of course another matter. As ponds go it is quite shallow so if the weather remains hot the weed will grow again fairly fast and we will probably need another session before the end of summer.