Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Next addition to the new pond

Dug the new 1/2 acre pond last fall. It's full of water. Next project is the best aquatic vegetation that will help fulfill my goals. I hope to use this pond as both a forage pond for feeding my BG and as a duck hunting pond. The most near term project is to plant some vegetation that will help feed and attract waterfowl. I decided to start with sago pondweed. I am buying this from the same source that I got my scuds from this spring, PLM. http://www.habitatnow.com/store/shop/shop.php?pn_selected_category=19
I just recieved notice that the sago is being harvested and will be shipped on May 9. Any advice on planting would be great. Unless someone points out a better way I will be planting per PLM instructions. Any comments on whether I should fertilize this pond? If so what type of fertilizer to help the sago grow?
Sago is a submerged plant. I'm still looking for an emergent plant for shallow water that will also benefit waterfowl. I'm thinking about burr reed. Any better suggestions?

Well, I got my sago pond weed. It arrived later than expected because we've had so much wind that PLM could not get out and harvest. Here again I'd like to say that Kyle has delivered as promised. He sells sago by the pound and advertises that you get over 300 plants per pound. I got a nice package of tubers that I haven't counted yet but it's a lot of plants. I'll be planting them this weekend. I've got the planting instructions from PLM but would still like to here from anyone who's done this and has any advice. These plants are going in my new pond which will be a combination duck hunting and forage pond. This stuff is really supposed to attact waterfowl so I hope it works.

Some day someone is going to be interested in this thread. So I'm going to post some pictures of the sago planting operation. The picture of the round container is the paper bags full of dirt used to house the sago tubers to keep the ducks from eating them. In my had you can see the sago tubers. They were all planted today. The method worked great. Put some dirt in a bag, put tubers in bag, put more dirt on top of tubers, staple bags shut, drop them out of the canoe into all areas of pond. If this works I hope to have a healthy stand of sago by year end.

Pretty neat deal. I hope you post more pictures as the sago progresses.

BZ,

I'm interested in this project along with your scud experiment. Since I have no experience with either of the two, scuds or waterfowl ponds, I've nothing to add. Both of these could be future projects though.

The outflow, from one of my ponds, flows through a field that could be dammed to create a shallow waterfowl/scud pond. You will be the guinea pig. Keep writing and posting pictures both here and in the scud thread. How are the scuds by the way?

Thanks


Russ

bz when you are on the cutting edge like you are on this one - no one can say much other than go after it and good luck. We will watch with anticipation. You might pm/email Bill C. He plants pondweed (Potamogeton) and others and might have some info.

I'll look into this bz. We're slowly creeping towards the construction of our 2 ponds (permitting) and I would like to pay special attention to adding desirable plants as soon as possible in the process.

I'm curious how many pond wranglers put in "good" plants as early as they could. It seems like it would help minimize future struggles with undesirable plant species.

Thanks for the encouragement all. Russ, I haven't seen a scud since they were stocked. Keep in mind that since my new pond was not vegetated yet I put the scuds in my BG pond. I don't expect many will survive but it represents my first experiment with them. I think later in the summer when I start netting duck weed I might find some scuds if they survived and multiplied. Or does anyone know are they always on the bottom? Next spring after I've established some plants in the new pond I'll put scuds in there as well. That has a much better chance. That area you've got to flood is ideal for attracting waterfowl. That is by far the preferred approach I would take if I had such an area. The only way I can make ponds is to dig them down to the water table and let them fill. No way to control level other than pumping and that's no good.
I will post progress on both the the "scud" and "sago" project. I am also trying to find some burr reed since I understand it is also good waterfowl food and native to my area. So there may also end up being a "burr reed" project. GW, I am definitely interested in planting what I want versus letting whatever happen. This pond hobby just has no limits does it?

bz, your method of planting the sago tubers is a good one. My sago in my small pond arrived naturally. I would have planted some of the tubers by hand (sticking them in the mud at 12"-16" deep), in the bags method, and by rubber-banding a small nail to each tuber and dropping it in desired areas. All methods would get the job done.

I have not seen any scuds since I planted them. I did save out about 2 dozen scuds from the shipment and put them in two buckets with coontail. I still have the scuds alive in the buckets plus there are a few young scuds in one of the buckets.

bz,

On the subject of bur-reed I can report that I've had no trouble transplanting cuttings from one of my ponds to the BG pond. Last years transplants are now 4-5 inches above water surface and look to be doing fine.

bz,

How deep is your 1/2 ac waterfowl pond? One of my concerns with the area I could flood, for use as a duck/scud pond, would be depth. It would only be a couple of feet in depth at most and most likely dry up in the heat of summer. I'm sure if this happened, there would be plenty of scuds for the barbie.

Russ, my pond is currently full and at about 5 feet deep. In a normal wet spring it would overflow and probably be 6 feet deep. Since my pond is just a hole in the ground I know that as the summer progresses the water will get shallower but I don't know how low it might get. I don't think mine will dry up but it could easily go down to two feet. You have burr reed? Do you know what kind? Are in interested in selling some roots?
Bill, maybe I will go out and take some tubers out of the sunken bags and manually bury them. Because I know my water level will drop considerably over the summer I have a dilemna as to how deep to plant the tubers. I really felt that I had better plant some of them in at least 3 feet of water so when the level goes down I don't lose them. So I planted at varying depths from 2 feet to 4 feet. I assume the plants will die if they come out of the water. Is that true? I have used the nail method before with some water celery I planted but I think the ducks found them before they grew and I lost them all.

bz,

I'm not a botanist so I can't tell you the exact species but what I have looks like the plant shown here(see the link in my post)

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000056;p=1

Sent you a PM.

Update. Just checked the progress of my sago planted in paper bags. I can see some of them close to shore are indeed growing. The bags are still in place but fall apart easily when touched. Not all the bags ended up standing upright which was a concern for me since the idea was that the plant would grow out of the top of the bag. This doesn't appear to be a problem in that the plants are growing right through the sides of the soft bags. I'll try some time to get pictures but that's hard to do when the plants are 1 to 3 feet submerged.

Update. I am happy to say that I discovered last night that I have sago pondweed growing in my pond up to about one foot tall now. The only negative I have to report is that Mr. Cody had a good idea in that I should have planted some by hand. It appears that the bag method I used does not get all the tubers buried deep enough to keep them anchored. I found about 12 to 15 plants floating along the pond edges, tubers still intact, healthy and growing, but not anchored in the bottom any more. I assume they will die this way. My guess is that since the plant itself floats some of them were not achored good enough and just floated up off the bottom. I noticed that even thougth the plant may be a foot tall there really is no root system yet. The plant grows out of the tuber but the only root is a single 2 to 3 inch spike going downward. This apparently is not enough to hold the plant anchored. I'm glad that of the several hundred I planted there were only a few floating free. I replanted these plants by hand and we'll see what happens. I'm looking forward to a very weedy duck/forage pond.

Update. Checked on the Sago status this past weekend. It's been a little over one month since planting. I now have sago growing tall enough to be floating on the surface and flowering. I dug a few plants up close to shore and find they are rooting well. The roots are going down 6 to 10 inches. I think this is going to be a success unless our current dry weather continues. This pond is down over 2 feet from the spring high and only had 4 feet of water at the deepest. In a way this has been a blessing in that the water has not cleared up as much as I had hoped so my concerns about light penetration were unfounded given that my depth has been cut in half. If things stay dry for too long some of my plants will be on dry land. That won't be good. I need rain.

bz, how's the sago project going?

Do you fish this pond at all? Wouldn't the sago be a problem for fishing?

GW, thanks for the inquiry. While I reported on another topic that my BG pond has made it through the summer I can't say the same for my sago project. This pond almost dried up before our recent rain. Worst drought we've had since the one in the late 1980's. I don't see any sago that survived. Unless it has the ability to go dormant I think I lost it all. I did take the opportunity to make the pond larger while it was down. As for the fishing. I don't intend to stock fish in this pond unless it be just minnows for forage. The pond is only 5 feet deep max and probably will average 3 feet deep. My current plan is to establish a good vegetation base and then stock scuds. I hope to use the scuds by catching them and transferring to the BG pond for forage and for attracting water fowl for hunting purposes. I'll probably start the sago over again next spring hoping for a normal summer in which I know the pond will maintain 2 to 3 feet of water. I also found a place to buy burr reed seed which I plan to plant this fall. How's things going in your part of the world?

bz, heard ya'll had it bad up that way, if you are wanting seeds then here is a link to a terrific mn source
http://www.prairiemoon.com/

i dont know about my scuds after 2 huge runoff events but expect them to have found quiet spots and made it through. my ponds stayed virtually full all summer and now the rains have returned.

CB, thanks for the tip on seeds, I haven't heard of that company so I'll check it out. I didn't see any bad weather and only 1.5 inches of rain. I would have liked at least 6 inches of rain. My scuds were stocked into my BG pond which is the one that is low and recently expanded. I have yet to see any evidence that they have survived since I stocked them. Got any hints as to how you find them if they are there?

CB, I checked out that company. They have a lot of stuff but price. They want $15 per 1/4 ounce for bur reed seed. I found a source in PA that gets $48 per pound. Think I'll go with $48/lb