Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants American Pondweed

Best way to get rid of it ??? American Pondweed

American Pondweed

I've used Aquathol K. It's pretty effective.

How much of an infestation do you have? To me, American pondweed is one of the more beneficial and preferred weeds to have.

Depending on the area (spot) you have to treat Aquathol K at 1.9 gals/acre foot would be the rate you need to be at. If you're treating a large area (shoreline) you could back down to 1.3 gals/acre foot.

It is all around the shore of a friends pond and he was asking me how to get rid of it. I agree that it would be beneficial to have, but he does not like it. It is only out about 5 feet from shore and his pond is 1/3 acre.

Consider putting in just one grass carp (white amur). Make sure the g.carp is big enough to not be eaten by the biggest bass. The G.carp should be about 65%-75% of the length of the biggest bass in the pond. Give the fish 2-3 yrs to get control of the weeds. In the meantime you may have to help the fish by manually removing some of the weeds. A 10" grass carp weighs about 0.46lb thus it is about $26.00 per pound - mighty expensive bass food. A 12" g.carp weighs about 0.75 lb and $15.96/lb. Ribeye steak often costs around $10-13.00/lb, thus it would be cheaper to feed the bass steak compared to feeding them grass carp.

Depending on how much you want to treat (remove) you can use some granular herbicides to spot treat sections of the American (longleaf) pondweed. Granular herbicides will give you more control as to how much you remove - leave growing. Aquathol superK is one granular that is effective on many submerged aquatic plants. Manual removal is also non-chemical with good control of how many plants you remove. Good manual tool is the weed razor or the weed shear. Either can remove lots of pondweeds in a few hours of work, but it is work, however no chemicals. In ponds less than an acre manual removal is very feasible. American pondweed doesn't do much growing or spreading after it flowers for the year, so cutting it before it flowers works well to reduce it for the remainder of the year. Consider a combination of methods for good plant management.

You might consider the Jenson Lake MowerTM - see lakemower.com . As someone already said, it's best to cut before the pondweed blooms. This late in the season, you could perhaps just focus on your critical areas such as dock / swim area /view. Simply trim the edge around the plants you leave, so it looks "waterscaped". It can save you a lot of work and will look beautiful.