Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Desperately need suggestions for emergent plants

Hi pond friends!

So we have a three-quarter acre pond, and we are seeing some pretty substantial drought right now. The pond is more than a foot lower than it should be. I know that’s not a lot for some places, but it’s very significant for us.

This pond was ignored for decades, and I am trying to help it. It has zero, I repeat zero emergent plants. There are plants on the shore, and there is a crap – ton of Coontail, what does nothing like cattails or pickleweed or anything like that that helps to stabilize the bank.

What I need help with is figuring out plants that can be submerged in water up to a foot over their crown. There’s a pretty good drop off right at the edge of the shore, it’s not like a slope where I have a lot of places where I can plant things that will just have 3 inches of water over them.

A lot of the reading I have done says that things like pickerel weed will only survive if there’s 4 inches of water above them. I know there’s stuff like cattails, but that is also supposedly aggressive and will take over the pond.

So put another way, what can I plant in the pond at the shoreline that’s like pickerel weed but can tolerate up to a foot of water over it most of the year, and was like cattails, but won’t grow out in water up to 4 feet deep?

In Connecticut.

Thanks!

I agree that cattails are a poor choice due to their aggressiveness. Pickerel weed and lizard's tail generally like shallow water but would likely work somewhere around your shore, but giant burred, spikerush (many species), whoolgrass, etc. would also work. While the water is down might be a good time to plant bald cypress as well, but away from the dam. Good luck!

I've had good luck with Deep water duck potato from Kester's.. took 2 years to get it figured out but they blew up this year out to 1.5-2'..

My pond varies by a foot or so most every year. The trick to starting vegetation that likes a certain range of water coverage is to plant several (4 or so) in a particular area with the first planting on the high side of the bank, next a few inches lower, third, forth and so on a bit further down in the water column. 4 might be excessive depending on your water level variance, but this allows them to get their roots established so they won't be so susceptible to low or high water conditions.

My pond has the Duck Potato (Arrowhead), Thalia Dealbata, & Pickerel Weed as emergence. It took a couple years of buying some of them to get them to take well. I'd bet I had a 50-60% success rate, but now, 5 years later, I have strong clusters of the PW & TD. The arrow head came on naturally and tend to not cluster, but are spread out in more solitary plants.

I have rather steep banks and would make a tight ring of rocks below the water and dump a bucket of good soil into the ring, then plant my plants in them. This helps keep the soil from sliding down the steep bank and gives the roots something more than a hard bottom to grow in. To this day, I still dump some soil in the rock ring pile every spring to supplement the loss of soil. My clusters have escaped the rock rings and are making the surrounding areas their own. I doubt the adding of soils is really necessary any more.

We always talk about picking the right plants. However, I like Noel's idea about installing some good soil to make a fertile bed for the plants.

Look at the soil surrounding the houses in new home construction projects, it almost always looks like crap in areas with clay subsoils. They either use stockpiled topsoil or truck in topsoil before planting the grass.

Looking at the pictures on the forum, most of the newly built ponds also have low-fertility soils along the littoral area immediately following construction. If you are going to expend a lot of effort to improve the plant population at your pond, I think improving the plant environment is an excellent idea!