permaculture

["Kirby Fry" <peace@totalaccess.net>]

Hi Claude,

>>  I have a small fishless pond that I'm experimenting with.  "Inoculated"
it with good pond water, transferred some lily pads etc.....all seemed good
last year. This year ( year 2) it's  scummy,
 dead looking... blech!  <<

If by small you mean something the size of a tractor tire pond or slightly
larger, then I would say you definitely need to aerate it and somehow clean
it out.  I would also consider lining it with at least gravel, mucking it
out seasonally and harvesting / mulching the algae, and exchanging the old
water with fresh every six weeks or so.

Use the old water to irrigate.  You could siphon it out  if you fill a
garden hose with water, shut off both ends of the hose (or at least keep
them at the same height as you...), disconnect the hose from the water
spout, lay it in the pond, take one end out and get it down hill from the
pond, open both ends of the hose.

I see ponds fulfilling a couple of different functions.  One, is as a water
storage basin / seep for irrigation such as our small ponds and swales which
are heavily planted with our perennial food garden.  The other is as a
permanent water reservoir where the water is used exclusively to benefit
plants and life forms in the pond and doesn't serve to irrigate or keep
moist the plants around it.

The 16' x 21' pond we just built for a client is lined and completely
covered with stones and gravel - two sizes of stone and three sizes of
gravel.  It also has a skimmer (2' x 2' x 3' deep) and water fall (slightly
larger and taller than the skimmer).  At 6" and 12 " deep there are shelves
running around the entire pond except for the viewing area that drops
straight off to the bottom at about 22" deep.  In the skimmer and falls are
four mats made from barley fibers treated with algae inhibiting bacteria.
We also added liquid concentrates containing similar bacteria.

Such a pond could be heavily planted with edible and beneficial water plants
not to mention crustaceans and fish.  It seems intensive but as far as I can
tell the results are worth it and over time you would learn how to minimize
your time and resource inputs.

>>  I find it so hard to balance "neat and pretty" with ecological
permaculture...  <<

After a Pc system gets installed and there's time to incrementally improve
upon it, such aesthetics become more possible and manageable.  I foresee the
tops of our berms (typically about 10' wide) being covered in some kind of
turf / beneficial ground cover such as thyme, chamomile, pink purslaine, and
low growing evergreen native grasses.  One could mow or weed eat with a
light duty electric mower or weed eater... or a goat!

Then the tops of the berms transition into the growing beds which are in the
swale key-line, about half way between standing water in swale and the tops
of the berms.  I'm considering metal edging or stone as a border.  The
growing area (between turf covered berm top and standing water) is kept
mulched just like a typical ornamental garden and these mulches can be
inoculated with soil food web enhancers like microbes, enzymes and sugars.

The swale bottoms have check dams every 30 ' or so and these cause the water
to stand for much longer in the swales.  The area under water could be
rocked and graveled and used for cultivating iris and taro.  Some of the
mini dams could be converted into stone foot-bridges.

Annual cover crops, which we have relied on heavily for building soils,
could be phased out over time.  We used a sorghum once that grew 7' tall and
was so thick you couldn't see three or four feet into it.  It was fantastic
but looked pretty strange when it turned brown and started falling over,
pretty ratty if you know what I mean.

The area around our larger permanent ponds could also be "turfed,"  and foot
paths could be made out of flat stones with nice edging delineating the
growing areas.  I would also like to at least set stone around the rim of
our existing pond and excavate / pour a gravel beach for getting into the
pond.  It's very steep as it is and I oncecut my foot on a rock getting out.

I think these changes would transform our site.  Incremental improvement is
the key.


Kirby Fry

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