My new 2 acre pond was dug one year ago in the middle of a young pine forest.I have thousands and thousands of 3-6 inch tall pine seedlings that have come up all over my pond banks. My question is should I get rid of all them? Will they actually "drink" that much water from my pond? Would it be better to let them grow to help arosion problems? I can actually pull most of them up by hand but can weedeat down a lot also. When you cut a young pine off near the ground will it kill it like a mature tree? I assume even if I kill all these off this year...next year will be the same problem. Need some advise.

James I would think that there is multiple reasons to rid of most of the pines- mostly they drink water from your pond and their needles will lower the ph of your water.also the pine straw will darken your water

Pine needles amazingly blow a fairly long distance and enter the pond as excess organics helping to create sludge and to a certain extent lower the pH.

I agree with what's been said above. I have a lot of pines just because they were there when I bought the place. I have gotten rid of several on the front side of the pond. I have done some research on this and a full grown pine can suck up to 100 gallons of water a day in the summer.

I have about 15 full grown ones still. So that could be up to 1500 gallons a day out of my pond plus evaporation at about a 1/4 inch a day. You can lose water fast!

I would not rid all of them like you said they can provide some protection from hard rains.... From all I have read you should keep them about 20 feet apart if you do keep any!

My pond is low most of the time like Bill and Pat said on the PH side. I never get over 7 and am usually around 6.2 to 6.5 and I think it's definitely because of the pines....

Course I have yet to put an AG lime in my pond either which will help for sure!

RC