My wife and I enjoyed living in the south for many years, but we're both happy to be back in the north country where we belong. We're even happier that last winter we bought a property with a decidedly rural character despite being only a half hour away from Albany, NY where my wife works. It even has a couple of good-sized ponds (2.2 ac manmade near the house, 2.4 ac natural beyond that) and a marsh (beyond the natural pond) for me to play in during my semi-retirement! :^] The surrounding mixed forest is especially lovely at this time of year, too, with the leaves turning their many different colors.
There's of course a downside to that last, as well, and that's what I'm hoping someone here might be able to help with.
See, we want to manage the manmade pond first and foremost for swimming and aesthetic beauty. (All we currently plan to do for the natural pond is eliminate invasive exotic vegetation to the best of our ability.) Its water is exceptionally clear for this area, with around 10 ft visibility most of the time (that’s why we bought the place! :^] ), and we really want to keep it that way. A free-floating algae bloom knocked visibility down substantially for a little while this summer and warned us that we can't just leave the pond's management to our good wishes. I'm looking into aerating it to shift nutrient consumption as best I can from algae to aquatic plants and to try to deal with its muck build-up without dredging (check out my thread at
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=458035#Post458035 ), but I'd also really like to reduce the amount of nutrients reaching the pond from the surrounding landscape.
All that surrounding forest drops an incredible amount of leaves and pine needles, don't you know. And a dismaying amount of what's dropped ends up in the pond despite my best efforts to keep it out.
So I'm wondering, has anyone come across or come up with any way to deal with large amounts of leaves and pine needles that fall or blow into a good-sized pond? (Short of removing the trees or trying to fence or otherwise screen off the pond, I mean.) I love and can probably afford automation but I'm not afraid to spend a meaningful portion of my semi-retirement in manual labor, if that's what it takes; it's just that there's so much water to cover and so much material falling into it that I simply can't accomplish enough by paddling about in my little boat and scooping the leaves and pine needles up with my hand net.
Anyone? Any way?...
(Hope, hope, hope...)
Gerry
