Allotment pond update

On Sunday, when we had ‘weather’ I found myself wandering around the allotments with three very heavy, somewhat seeping, carrier bags. No, I hadn’t been nicking stuff (there must be a very special circle of hell reserved for people who steal from allotments, and I have no intention of ending up there) I was transporting pond plants to Maurice’s pond.

Maurice, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, is an ‘older’ allotment holder. In fact he’s in his nineties, and his plot is one of my favourite places to visit. He has some very unusual and lovely things (like his medlar tree, of which more later in the year) and beds full of highly organised and productive plants, interspersed with flowers. He’s been installing a pond, with the help of his co-worker, Mark, and my contribution has been to divide some of the plants from my own pond for him. It’s not quite such fun to contemplate a pond in the drizzle as it is to stand around it in the sunshine, but it still looked great now its been bedded in and my plants: a water grass, a marsh marigold and an arum lily, looked quite at home within seconds of being removed from their bags and plonked onto the ledge.

He’s also been ‘donated’ about half a ton of ornamental stone, I’m not sure what it is, some kind of iron ore bearing rock, which looks very dramatic and I can’t wait to see how he uses it to shape the rockery behind the pond. I’m always impressed by the ingenuity of allotment holders.

Labels: allotment-plants, allotment-pond

Allotment tasks – planting a pond

There’s any number of reasons for having a pond on an allotment:

It’s good for wildlife, and that means pollinating insects will be taking up residence on your plot – good for producing lots of crops

It helps create a microclimate – while irrigating plants is important for growth, it’s not the whole story; many plants need water in the form of mist or vapour and respond to various climatic cues such as dew falling and rising, which allow the plant to know whether it should be preparing for ‘rest’ or readying itself for photosynthesis. Having open water also reduces the amount of water you need to use around plant roots from a hose or watering can as plants can draw water from the atmosphere as well as the ground.

A well set up and mature pond (say three to five years old) should be a self sustaining eco-system: the water should provide enough miniscule aquatic life to keep fish healthy. Of course if your pond is younger than that, or smaller than say two metres across and four feet deep, you will need to keep feeding fish between late April and October because the water probably won’t be rich enough to sustain fish life. Remember though, that on an allotment, wildlife in the form of snails and insects, water beetles, pond skaters and who knows what, will all turn up as they migrate, get blown onto your plot, or arrive in the treads of wheelbarrows or on the soles of other people’s shoes as they pass by. You need to keep it filled with rainwater, because the chlorine in tapwater is very bad for fish.

So that’s me, pondering Maurice’s pond, which has to go into the ground in the next few weeks, and wondering how long it will take to fill with rainwater.

Labels: allotment-pond, allotment-tasks-march

Allotment tasks - February Pond

I got a phone call last night saying that Maurice is ready to install his new pond! Back at the late end of last summer, we volunteered to help him dig out the space for the line that he’s been given, but that was before my other half was told he shouldn’t be doing any digging, as he’s developed golfer’s wrist or hockey player’s elbow or bowler’s bicep or some such thing that means he’s not supposed to lift or dig. So guess who’s going to be up to her oxters in a big hole?

Anyway, it is that time of year. We’ve been working on our home pond this month, and I notice that several of our allotment friends have been doing the annual maintenance on theirs.

A big spring clean for a pond involves taking out some pond water and putting it in a big container, moving all the fish into that container, putting the plants in another container, and pumping out the pond. Then you need to scrub out the bottom and sides of the pond with fresh water and a soft brush (a hard one might damage a flexible liner), pump out that water, return the plants, fill the pond with fresh water (rainwater for preference, if it has to be tap water, you need to let it sit for two or three days so it can run through the filter and dechlorinate.

Put the fish in plastic bags with their old water and some air, and float the bags on top of the newly cleaned pond until the water in the bag and the water in the pond are the same temperature. If the clean water temperature differs more than a few degrees from the old pond water, the shock could kill all the fish.

Labels: allotment-pond, allotment-tasks-february