At the start of Autumn your pond plants will start to collapse. Did we actually have a Summer this year?
Pay attention to pond plants now Autumn is here:
- Waterlily leaves begin to turn brown - remove them from the pond so that they do not sink to the bottom and rot under water over Winter.
- Remove any annual floating plants that will turn black in the first frosts and begin to decay in your pond water.
- Net duckweed out from pond surface so that it does not seed down to the bottom of the pond to reappear next Spring.
- Rescue Frogbit plants and Sagittaria sagittifolia bulbils before starting Autumn maintenance.
British Native Frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae):
- Starting to breakdown now as temperatures drop
- Dormant buds will drop off the leaves and fall to the base of the pond
- Buds are 5x10mm or 1/8" x 1/4" and look like apple pips.
- These will easily be lost if you do not remove some now while you can still see them
- Put some plantlets in a bucket for safety until after you have finished your Autumn maintenance in November.
- Don't forget to put a label on your bucket so some kind person doesn’t empty the bucket for you!
British Native Arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifolia):
- Looking yellow leaved and over.
- Find the bulbils in the mud of the pond near the basket and replace them in their baskets.
- The parent plant will die back after a couple of years but the new plants do not grow from the centre of the old basket but from the bulbs that were set down 6-8" away from the original basket.
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- Keep falling tree leaves out of the pond
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What your pond plants will look like at the start of Autumn:
- Don't panic when your pond plants turn brown and the leaves starts to rot down
- Look at our photos in Tips and Advice - Your pond plants in Autumn to see what our pond plants are doing now.
Tree leaves:
- Tree leaves will soon start to fall and the covering net should be fixed across the pond to prevent them falling into the water
- Put the net in place as soon as the first winds are forecast - the first windy night will bring down more leaves than you expect.
- Leaves should not be allowed to sink to the base of the pond to rot.
- Some tree leaves take a long time to rot away and use up a lot of oxygen in the process.
- Use a dipping net to remove them by hand before they sink.
