Saturday, July 16, 2011

Battle of Duckweed

The duckweed in our pond keeps trying to reintroduce itself.  I have a zero tolerance policy with duck weed.  I will do a visual check of the pond and remove every single little green fleck of pond weed that I see.  I've been doing this since last year.  I don't know where the stuff is coming from.  Every week there are between 5 and 20 little bits to remove.

The duck weed may have had a benefit.  I shaded the water and inhibited the growth of a new pond pest - blanket weed.   Sheesh!

I was scooping out the blanket weed and discovered that the newts have been busy!

Baby newts!

I have to be very gentle and check the blanket weed carefully.  These very small and delicate newt babies are living in there.

That little guy went straight back in the pond and wiggled away.  No harm was done to any newtlings during the production of this blog entry.

5 comments:

Shammickite said...

Where there's water, green stuff will grow, not much you can do about it!

Peggy said...

I'm not really complaining . . . and I think I'll leave most of the blanket weed until the newtlings have grown in size.

The duck weed is still going though.

AZ said...

"Duckweed is commonly spread by migratory birds flying between ponds with the tiny plants clinging to their feathers." Who knew?

Xtreme English said...

Ah, fun! Your pond seems much bigger and fancier!

Anonymous said...

Survival of the fittest - that's weeds for you. I left my garden untended for 2 weeks and it took many hot hours out of my vacation week in July to get rid of them. So daily inspections are worth it! --Cousin Susan