Dirty little pond secrets revealed! I Sold mucky dirty river soil with big pond plants to people! And they loved them!
When I worked at this big green house making pond plants to sell I had to come up with some soil to pot the plants in. I made a special soil from the stinky bottom of the river muck, when water level was low. This was real black stinky muck! The river bottom is naturally high in clay. I would mix this river muck with equal parts peat and some water to make a thick heavy pudding type soil. I would line the plant pots with brown paper cause plants love to root thru paper pulp. I had many shallow square pond tables that would all flow together with a cheap simple pump, to pump water to top table. I had many tables, all with as many square pots as I could per table. The water would flow gently from table to table. The water from the main greenhouse hose was used to flll and top off pond tables, sometimes the lines were not cleared proper and the hose had fertilizer still in it. To make matters worse, some people were clumsy and would knock the pots over and muck would spill everywhere. Muck was going to be factor because plants had water flowing over them always. Some tables were in full sun, some had more shade. Some were inside and some were outside. None ever had a UV lights, or big pumps and fancy filters. Non of those ponds every got pea green water or excess string algae!
I thought about this for several days, some people clean their ponds too much and disturb the natural balance. These tables worked I think because these were never clean! Like my ponds, I never clean, only the filters, and only remove some sludge from the middle pond in spring. My ponds get lots of leaf litter and stuff. Somehow these ponds always stay clean?
Below is an crude experiment designed to show you what happens to some ponds. There are five jars of equal size, all placed in the same location. Jar 1 is just tap water, jar 2 is tap water and river muck and peat mix' and a rock. Jar 3 is tap water and plants only, jar 4 is tap water, river muck and peat mix, a rock and plants, and jar 5 has pond water, pond sludge, pond plants, and leaf litter.
Each jar has 2 snails except the tap water only jar.
Which jar will get green water first? Every day I all send you a picture. Set your own up and see what happens!
