Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Beaverboy-one man, one spade, and a vision

The ones I've built this year, I'm hoping they actually don't hold water year round. Therefore, things like fish or bullfrogs won't take hold, and small lil critters will be able to enjoy friendly breeding grounds. The concept of a vernal pond is that it briefly holds water a few months of the year. They obtain enough water from snowmelt and spring rains to hold them through the summer, and by fall, they are dry. This fall, its been quite wet, so a couple of the ones I have built have water already. Even saw a tiny frog enjoying the playground.


In 2005 I started this vernal pond addiction. But the problem was that I underestimated how much water can quickly go through an area. This vernal pond quickly turned out to be not so vernal afterall.
(spring 2007 pic)
With a heavy snowmelt and a flood in 2007, the pipe was quickly washed out, and this has kept water in it for 3 years running..... I also did a couple other ponds in that year, that just had too much flow going through them. But there was one pond way high in the uplands also built in 2005, that indeed did function as a vernal pond should. So that's why I've decided to work from the highest point possible and work my way down from now on.



With having very little watershed running into them, I just have these vernal ponds so they run around the end. But my eyes must play tricks on me, because the vernal pond I built in 2005, had that design, but the top of the dam ended up being lower so it didn't run around the end, and ran over the top. But the structure didn't suffer though because of the tiny watershed. I dug out that vernal pond some this summer and topped it. Including that vernal pond and the 6 I dug this year, I have seven so far, one after another.




beaverboy has had a lil help with a wheelbarrow also . But so far, terrain more or less has been too hard to use a wheelbarrow efficiently.


yep, I was going to start a topic awhile ago, showing pics of a neighbor's pond getting built. Its about a mile away, and I walk by it every couple months while hiking along. I do intend to make that topic still. I have before and after pics of it and would be entertaining enough for a place like this.