I am loving the pond love and the knowledge, thank you so much.
We do have pipes that we use to take acequia water for irrigation our syntropic agroforestry system (where we grow most of our food) using drip lines, but the problem with the pipes is that these ancient aquaducts are filled with sediment and then we are dealing with clogs on a weekly basis (if not daily..). The idea of gravity feeding a complex system of ponds as canals is that we wont need to maintain it as much, and can leave gravity to do more of the work in spreading the water out throughout the land.
We built a nice check dam at the top below the gate, where the water is now slightly stalled and can potentially be diverted in a few other directions (working on digging some safe channels), and we also dug out 2 new channels diverting additional water along some terraces. Our landscape is very steep (1:1 most of the areas) so we can only build serious structures on the bottom forth of the property.
Out of the pond sites, we are going to go with two of them, both with the purpose of bringing more vegetation and life to dry parts of the land. I wonder if we can irrigate some trees around the pond just by having some seepage into the ground (which trees can access this slowly leaking water and from how far away?
Also, what kind of vegetation will hold in the banks of the pond?
We bought 400kg of bentonite clay, but the ponds are too small for a roller, and we do want some seepage, not completely sealed up. How would you recommend using the clay to seal without a big machine?
Not sure how to post pics here, but I'd add a few of what we have done so far.
Thanks to all you amazing pond experts out there:)
