How do I manage out of control pond plants?
Question:The pond is on my in-laws farm. It's approximately 30 ft x 20 ft - the center is about 3-4 ft deep and the edges a little under a foot deep. The only animals that live in it are frogs and toads (perhaps a few turtles). The pool is not lined. The cat tails are out of control and we fear they will take it over completely next year. We have sprayed them with round-up (it only browned them) and we have dug them out with the backhoe (they were back a couple months later). What are our options - we desperately want to save our pond! (We are thinking about possible liners or chemicals but we're not wanting to spend a TON of money (a few hundred dollars would be fine) and we don't want to completely pollute the water out.)
Answers:
Even if you put the plants in the containers they still will eventually either grow out of the pot or reseed themselves in other places.
Manually removing all of the unwanted plants is the only advice I can give. If you are persistant it will pay off. Just keep pulling out the plants you do not want. Eventually you will win. You need to do it by hand and shovel insuring you get the roots and all of all the plants while leaving the soil. I would not hesitate to pull them all up if they are a problem and keep pulling untill no more come up. You can't just do it once. They are like weeds.
I am not for poison because it may damage you pond in other irreversable ways.
The only thing you can do without poisoning the pond is to continue manual removal.
Otherwise, if you really want the pond, drain it and have it lined. Then you can start with new pond plants in CONTAINERS to keep them under control.
Every animal in that pond will be grateful for more cattails not less.They provide nesting material and food for numerous species.You should not remove them just because you don't like to look at them.
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