In one word..."Wow"! What a difference the past week has made on the clarity of the pond. 4 weeks ago we added the lime and when I arrived on Friday the water was clear to about 12 inches. I had just returned from Henderson, Texas where I purchased twenty five 50 lb bags of gypsum from Ken at BoatCycle. (They also had alum, both products at a fair price) That I planned on adding this weekend.

I added 800 pounds of gypsum to the pond on Friday afternoon. After reading the forum string on "sinking the boat with gypsum" I limited my row boat applications to no more than 5 bags at a time! Here is how I applied it to the pond since I did not have a boat motor or other means to evenly spread the gypsum: I dumped 2 bags of gypsum into a large cow molasses tub that I had centered in the rowboat and had a quart sized scoop. It was a slightly breezy day so I started at one end of the pond and slung a quart of gypsum about every 3 feet on both sides of the boat. After about 15 feet I would row backwards into the area where I spread the gypsum further dispersing it. I repeated this over a 2 hour period of time effectively evenly dispersing it. This was tough work - but I know many of you would agree that working on a boat in a new pond is about as fun as it gets!

By Saturday morning the pond had cleared to 14 inches. I am optimistic that next weekend will be even better. So here is a chronological order of what I did in total to the pond over the past 2 months:

7/21/07 I lined the edges of the pond with old hay. It was half in and half of the water. This helped slow erosion and sediment from our sandy soil and created a small bank. I added another 1,000 pounds of hay to the surface. The water was zero visibility.

8/19/07 - 1 inch visibility. Added 3 tons of ag lime to the pond today.

9/3/07 - 2 inches of visibility
9/15/07 - 10 inches visibility! Some of the hay is now floating on the side of the pond with grteen algae growing off it.
9/21/07 - 12 inches visibility and added 800 lbsof gypsum.
9/22/07 - 14 inches visibility

I wish I would have added the lime months ago - however our local companies had been unable to get it in bulk previously. The reccomendations from this forum have really made a difference!

"Our Life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, Simplify" -Henry David Thoreau -