Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Hello from SW Ohio

Howdy everybody,

I am just starting up our brand new 14' deep, quarter acre pond in Oxford, OH. We want to use it for swimming and fishing. Now if I can just get grass growing around it to keep down the mud input during big rain storms. In the past month we had two rainfall events that were pretty extreme. The first dumped 4" of rain in about 12 hours, and the second dumped 1.5" in an hour, and another half inch in the next hour! The pond has a 9-10 acre watershed, most of which is a hay field, but part of it is sparsely vegetated clay mud surrounding our new house and barns, plus the banks of the pond itself. I had everything seeded and grass was just starting to grow when all that rain trashed a lot of it. I'll keep at it and I'm sure it will be fully vegetated in a couple of months. I stocked it about a week ago with LMB, HSB, Bluegills, Hybrid Bluegills, Redears, 5 lbs of GSM, 10 lbs of Fatheads, and some mosquitofish. My next move will be to install an aerator in the next few weeks.

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZrkDj87hAy93pL6E8[/img]
[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/vZgCsUu8vi2nC5Xn9[/img]

For a new pond, your grass is doing pretty good.

The pond was finished last fall, but didn't fill until a month ago. I seeded the entire area, but we had an extremely dry fall so a lot didn't germinate. This spring the rains washed much of that seed away. Still, a fair amount of grass grew in places. To give you an idea of the erosion I've contended with look at the photos below. I had what we call a gravel river collecting water and carrying it to the pond. It was a 6-8" deep channel lined with fabric and was filled with river rock. The 2 big rain events basically shot all that gravel into the pond leaving what looks like a gigantic slip-n-slide. The closer photo shows the large stones that used to be at the edge of the pond but were subsequently largely buried by gravel and mud and the shore was extended out about 3 - 4'! You can also see all the mud deltas formed by erosion of the banks. It's a bummer. We are going to dig the gravel river down another foot or so, re line it with fabric, and put in rip rap. That should do the trick. Just apply money vigorously.

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/F5Mx2GXKk2Y9FF3RA[/img]
[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/5VPA3YQCUnqAKgzEA[/img]

We didn't get grass growth here for squat after we finished second cutting hay.
Rinse and repeat.

We're about to take our first cutting. It's looking good!

Refreshing when someone knows the proper spelling of bodark.

Bois-D'arc

H-E-D-G-E-A-P-P-L-E

Osage Orange

From the wikipedia page for Osage Orange:

"Maclura pomifera has many names, including mock orange, hedge apple, hedge, horse apple, crab apple, monkey ball, monkey brains and yellow-wood. The name bois d'arc (from French meaning "bow-wood") has also been corrupted into bodark and bodock."

I love that the 'Merican version of bois d'arc is bodark.

I also remember bringing home "monkey brains" for my mother from our quail hunting trips when I was a little boy!

We always called them Monkey Ball trees.

Years ago we had some old fence posts still in the ground along the road at one of our farms when I was a kid. The place used to be a horse farm, the posts were osage and my Dad said they were 100 years old. We used to pull them and use them from time to time...they had to be drilled to get a fence staple into them.

A few years ago I was telling a friend of mine about them and he asked if there were still any there, I told him yes along the woods. I pulled one for him and he made me a pair of duck&goose calls out of it for me.

Wow, those are gorgeous!