In summer the surface of our garden pond is covered in a thick layer of duckweed and dealing with it is a real problem. If I skim it off with a rake I inevitably catch a lot of tadpoles and newt-poles that live amongst its tangled, thread-like roots and it takes a long time to release them all and return them to the pond. But this morning I accidentally discovered a quick and simple way to remove duckweed in large quantities, at little risk to the other pond life. I was weeding out sticky Jack (aka cleavers aka goosegrass) and accidentally dropped some in the pond. When I fished it out it was covered with duckweed, entangled in the tiny hooks that cover sticky Jack - see http://beyondthehumaneye.blogspot.com/search/label/sticky%20JackA handful of sticky Jack did an even better job and after ten minutes of using this technique, which uses one weed to get rid of another, the pond surface was almost clear. I couldn't find any trapped tadpoles in the sticky Jack – the technique just removes the duckweed from the surface. The only problem is that now I’ve run out of sticky Jack – and I know the duckweed will return.
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Plenty of Goosegrass here if you're stuck for some :) That sound like a very useful tip Phil.
ReplyDeleteGreat discovery Phil.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the cleavers will soon return too.
I can let you have heaps of it!
ReplyDeleteThink i`ll try that, Phil. I`ve got plenty of both in my garden.
ReplyDeleteA quick visit for now.
ReplyDeleteThere is an AWARD on my blog for you.
Just pop in and pick it up.
Ta.
Right, I'm gonna try that! Nice sight by the way. Fpound you through Mostly macro
ReplyDeleteHi John, Keith, Dean, Toffeeapple, Holdingmoments and Warren - hope it works as well for you as it did for me. I found that all I needed to do was drag the goosegrass across the water surface and it pulled off the duckweed. I used to remove the duckweed with a rake but that also snagged and dragged out the pondweeds too. I found it also helps if you top up the pond with a couple of inches of water - that lifts the floating duckweed clear of the pondweeds that are anchored to the pond bottom and makes it easier to remove just the duckweed.
ReplyDelete