You can use pond water for your plants.
As more and more homeowners decorate their yards and gardens with ponds, they are becoming increasingly curious about how they can use pond water for their garden plants. Pond water has been used for centuries as a means to irrigate plants. However, there are precautions that need to be taken if you are going to use pond water for your plants. Does this Spark an idea?
History of Using Bodies of Water to Irrigate
The ancient Aztecs, Egyptians and Chinese perfected the use of large bodies of water for irrigating plants. Though others over the last two thousand years have tried, the Aztecs, Egyptians and Chinese were successful because they followed a few basic rules.
First, the ancient irrigators used well-drained soil. Because the soil drained easily, the water did not merely run off and away from the plants. Second, the Aztecs, Egyptians and Chinese had a good supply of water. Whether the water was a bit salty or limey, the hydraulic engineers had a lot of it, which allowed them to use only the top layer for plants, letting salt- or lime-laden lower layers remain in the pond. Finally, they fertilized the soil. The Aztecs did this by engineering land masses, called chinampas, for their plantings at the center of lakes that had been stocked with fish. The fish waste and algae provided excellent fertilizer.
Pond Water's Benefits
Pond water not only contains algae as a beneficial fertilizer for plants, but fish excrement, as well. Both algae and fish waste make great fertilizer. Even without fish, pond water contains plant decay in the form of leaves and nutrients in the form of insects and thus can contain a variety of elements needed for healthy plant life.
Disease & Fungi Precautions
Water-borne disease and fungi are real threats when it comes to watering plants with pond water. Anthracnose is a fungal, water-borne disease which causes spores to spread via irrigation. Leaf blight consists of a variety of viruses in the Pseudomonas family, which will cause discoloring of vegetables and grains and lead to cysts and damaged crops.
Salt, Acid & Lime Precautions
Salt, lime and acid are three other concerns when using pond water to water your ground plants. Rain water found in ponds is generally acidic in nature, and thus, can cause alkali-loving plants to diminish. Lime, an alkaline, in pond water has the opposite effect, causing plants that love acid to wither. Both acid and lime are abundant in ponds and lakes.
In areas of the country where bodies of water are even mildly salty, not using enough water, or having poorly drained soil can cause your garden soil to become salty. Salt is a known destroyer of plant life.
Use Pond Water for Plants
There are a few ways to kill bacteria and fungi in your pond water before using it on your plants. Place a gallon of pond water under a UV light for a few hours. The light will kill the bacteria and fungi in the water. You can also use potassium permanganate to kill bacteria, fungi and viruses in your water by mixing the chemical in the water.
Once you have your water ready, make sure the soil around your plants is not hard or compact, then pour the water over the plants. Tilled soil will absorb water more quickly than hard soil.
Tags: pond water, your plants, Aztecs Egyptians, Aztecs Egyptians Chinese, bacteria fungi
