water evaporation due to plants?

[micaaronfl76]

Hi all,

I thought i fixed all my stream problems with water loss but i just noticed that i seem to be losing water and its not due to the stream runoff this time. I attached a pic of my pond which has exploded with plant life. I seem to be losing almost a quarter inch a day when its sunny or cloudy. Can pond plants cause water evaporation just from living? i also have a ton of creeping jenny on the edges and they have crept into the pond.

 

[addy1]

Wow looking good! The plants will use some water. If it is really hot and dry, windy and dry you will lose more water than a cloudy wet day, creeping jenny puts out tons of roots into the water, same with the blue forgetmenot. Love that stuff. When it gets straggly after blooming trim it back, it starts over.

I lose around an inch a day. Mainly due to the bog (lots of surface area) and tons of plants, they suck the water up. Used to think I had a leak, but over winter the water level never changes, so now do not worry unless the water drops over 2 inches in a day.

I just have a auto water via a sprinkler system come on to top the pond off every day. Right now it is off since we are having 5 days of rain.

Watch the roots, they can plug the stream flow and redirect water. My creeping jenny gets trimmed out of the stream if it gets too dense it will redirect the flow. I use the trimmings with all the roots to start the jenny other places in the yard.

 

[micaaronfl76]

thanks addy, btw the forget me nots (left of pic) have exploded in the waterfall basket, wasnt sure if they were sucking the water up as well.

Water hyacinths are also doubling every other day

 

[slakker]

1/4 inch doesn't seem like much to me, but I'm pretty new to ponds and mine has a high waterfall with lots of splash-off.

 

[haver79]

Are the blue forget me nots the same ones you would plant in a dirt flower bed or are they different?

 

[addy1]

My land 4getmenots, look different than the water 4getmenots. If I remember I will get pictures of both tomorrow. I have heard the land ones do ok in the water.

 

[Waterbug]

I have a bunch of pond plants in containers which I water everyday. I assumed most of the water loss was from evaporation from the soil. But 2 pots of Canna aren't doing very well and the soil in those pots stays wet (no drainage pots) for many days while I'm adding about 10-15 gal per day to pots where the Canna is growing well. It really surprised me how much water they used and how little evaporated from the soil..