Hi Everyone,
I have to admit that our pond at home is looking a bit worse for wear as a lot of leaf litter has blown in since last autumn. I will need to remove as much of them as I can before the frogs become active and lay their eggs (usually in February depending on weather).
We put in the pond fifteen years ago using a PVC pond liner. I wanted it to not only look nice but to also attract wildlife into our garden. I planted loads of native pond plants and pretty soon plenty of little critters found their way into our garden. One thing I noticed was that after a few years of frogs breeding our local population of slugs seemed to reduce dramatically and soft plants like Hosta suffered less and less damage.
It seems to be important to have a large amount of plants in the pond to use up nitrogen that is created by material rotting at the bottom of the pond. They also give protection to larvae of various insects. Without the plants your water would quickly turn green and look poor. If you have problems, straw stuffed into the leg of a pair of tights and weighed down with some stone will absorb a lot of the nitrogen in your water and the pond will clear after a few weeks. This can be replaced every two months.
Fish can cause trouble to wild life as they quickly gobble up tadpoles and insect larvae and if over stocked will stir up sediment creating cloudy water that will turn green. It’s best to avoid them if you want to encourage Dragonfly, Damselfly etc into your garden or better still make one pond for fish and another for wildlife!
All the best for now Malachy