Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam Pines on the dam

My dam was built in May 2010. It is 12feet across at the top and slopes gradually away in both directions. Would I be doing serious harm by letting volunteer pines grow on the backside?

SC, I've asked about Pines and Willows on my dam and got a resounding NO for the willows. The Pines had a mixed response. I did a bunch of research on Pine root systems and found that what type of Pine makes a BIG difference. Try to make sure what kind of Pine is poppin up then research that types root extension. Many folks just plain don't want any kind of tree growin on or near their dam and that is for sure your safest bet. In my case my pond is only about 80' from a gravel road that two factories employees use to avoid going through town. I have a few hundred cars travel my road everyday and the wind is from the west about 80% of the time. I had to do something to try to cut down on the dust so I opted to plant White Pines and Blue Spruce about midway from pond to road. They won't grow tall enough in my life to do much good but should make it a better pond for my grandkids. The sweet part of it is if the trees root through the dam it's gonna be the grandkids headache. As Dono would say, fair enough EH.

Thanks Bob-o, my pines are southern yellow pines. They have a large shallow tap root that may go down 3 to 5 foot on a 60-70foot tree. The rest are shallow secondary roots not more than a foot deep usually. I could keep them off of the upper elevation and top of the dam fairly easily. I guess I am really looking for an excuse not to have to mow the backside.

Tom, we got goats....they will keep your your "backside" mowed and pond edges manicured and eat all the water primrose they can reach....biological aquatic vegetation controllers...

I can't think of anything positive about trees anywhere on a dam. But, I can think of a lot of negatives.

It just me that if your going to plant a tree around a pond it should be a pine or spruce of some sort. The leaves will not load your pond with muck and they make such a nice whispering sound when the wind blows eh.

I love the southern yellow pine for its wood. I bought a whole truck load of 2X10 random length for my company when our dollar was good. Love the grain but heavy and more difficult to work with then white pine.

I personally feel that any shallow root tree should be fine but I have not had any experience with this on dams. What I can tell you is about the spruce and pine is that they really have very little roots. They will grow roots in the fall so all their energy is in the ground for the spring. They will grow roots till the ground starts to get frost. Then they sit dormant for the winter. I have 16 foot blue spruce that I still do not know how they stand in the wind with such little root mass. All the little hair roots must hole so much dirt they can stand.

Cheers Don.