Preparing Your Pond For Winter
Although ponds need little routine maintenance, there are a few end-of-season tasks that are essential if you want to keep your plants and fish in good condition.
- Protect the pond from the worst of the leaf fall with a fine-mesh net. Anchor it just above the surface of the pond. This is not practical for a large pond, but it is useful for a small one. Remove the leaves regularly, and eventually take the netting off.
- If you are not able to cover your pond with a net, or don’t like the appearance of one, use a fish net or rake to remove leaves regularly — not only from the surface, but from below the surface as well. Too many leaves in the water can pollute the pond.
- Submerged oxygenating plants, such as elodea and rampant growers like myriophyllum, will eventually clog the pond unless you net or rake them out periodically. This is a good time to thin them simply by raking out the excess.
- Trim back dead or dying plants from around the edge of the pond, especially where the vegetation is likely to fall into the water.
- To divide overgrown water plants, first remove the plants from their containers. It may be necessary to cut some roots to do so.
- Some plants can simply be pulled apart by hand, but others will have such a tight mass of entangled roots that you need to chop them into smaller pieces with a spade.
- Discard any pieces you don’t want for replanting, then pot up the others in planting baskets. Cover the top of the baskets with gravel to prevent soil disturbance.