Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Pond grasses or plants

It looks like you have enough shallow areas to plant some shoreline marginal plants. For your larger pond - pit that can be fished from a boat, I would start with low cost free plants - some cattails collected from wild growing plants. There are two types of native cattails wide leaf (Typha latifolia) and narrow leaf (Typha angustifolia). Look into the bull rush species hard stem and soft stem, learn to recognize them for when you go collecting. Bull rushes tend to have more open spaces between individual plants as cover for young fish. I would not use these plants in ponds 1 ac or less due to fast spread and being a nuisance in later years. You may have to protect the initial plantings with tree branches so the GC cannot get to the plants to eat them. Once established these plants should be not be a prime food of GC. These plants will grow into water 3-5ft deep but GC should/could eat the deeper ones. These plants do spread, but in 5 ac it should take many years before they are a nuisance. Proper herbicides will work to keep them under control.