Pond, blanketweed and plants

MissM

My pond, dug Jan/Feb this year and stocked April/May. Large amount of blanketweed that appears to be choking my plants. I've bought some barley flake things (can be seen floating), and some ramshorn snails (who seemed to be in hiding), and I twirl the weed out daily. A few questions:

Are my plants being suffocated? Any recommendations on rescuing them?

Should I repot plants that have outgrown their pots?

I am a pond newbie and don't want to have to completely restock after 6 months!

Ceres

A new pond takes a while to bed down and reach a state of equilibrium so don't worry too much about the blanket weed....just keep hauling the stuff out. You shouldn't need to repot any plants yet providing they were in decent sized pots to start with. Do you have any oxygenating plants in the pond? They can help keep things in balance. This place has a good selection of pond plants.....and no, I don't work for them. https://www.puddleplants.co.uk/oxygenating-pond-plants-floating-pond-plants/

dappledshade

That's a good sized pond.
Im going to be making ours soon too and am slightly nervous. Never created a pond before!

bullfinch

What a lovely looking pond

Bijdezee

Ours that we set in March has just gone wrong. The plants are ok but we had 5 fish, only one has survived. I  put her in a large bucket of rainwater with oxygenating plants and she seems OK so far.

I also found a lot of goldfish fry. We kept some, dont know if they will survive. I am going to clean out the whole thing and refill. 1 remaining fish will stay in the bucket until its had a chance to settle then try again.i suspect a combination of too much sun and too much food give, water went green.

 Going to ask at the pond centre and have them test the water. Meanwhile, I have to think of some way to shade it, my garden is very sunny.

Do you have any fish OP? I found the whole plant thing quite confusing. The soil in the pots seemed to end up in the water and there was a lot of sediment. We had a water lily and two oxygenating plants plus the marginal ones. 

Fairygirl

As already said , a new pond takes a while to settle, and all ponds acquire some blanketweed etc as the water warms up in spring.
It's also necessary to have some planting which will cover some of the surface - about a third or so. Plants take a few years to mature, just as they would in a standard border, so it's really just a question of patience - often difficult!
Take a look at some of the surface, floating plants, and maybe invest in one or two. Once your water lilies mature, they'll cover a bigger surface area anyway. If you got your plants locally, and they don't have anything suitable, there are lots of good online specialists. 

Bijdezee

I have floaters and the pond is small anyway. 

MissM

I have bought lots of oxygenators - some of them now seem to be covered in blanketweed! All plants bar one new lily I bought on-line, Devon pond plants, Puddle plants...
The pots some of them came in are the size of the opts sitting on the 'deck' area. Not that big... Ah! patience - not one of my strong points...
My tips: @dappledshade - make your pond as big as you can - we wish that we'd gone even slightly bigger. Ours is about 3x2m and nearly 1m deep. Slope your shelves away from the centre of the pond so that pots can't fall off too easily. Ours slope slightly towards the middle...

LG_

You can get pond planting bags instead of pots, which cope better with uneven surfaces as you can sort of squish them into being balanced the way you need. A bit fiddly but useful.

Ceres

I'd definitely recommend the planting bags. They have no sharp edges and don't break as easily as the plastic pots. Wonder if it is possible to run some up at home using hessian?

It is a good idea to pot up your pond plants into something sizable before putting them in the pond. They are going to be there a while and will expand a lot. As to shielding the water surface from sunlight, I must thin out the bog bean that has taken over the water area and is doing its best to rampage through the surrounding beds. That and the dreaded duck weed keep the light from my pond very efficiently.

Ennyl

Hi all

I'm a pond newbie as well - pond has been established a year now.

What I have learnt: some pond weed is OK, just keep twirling out using a stick Great for the compost heap once you have given the snails and water boatmen a chance to escape back in the water. But be careful - a couple of weeks' ago, I was pulling the weed apart before tipping on to the heap and found a baby newt all wrapped up.

I use small hessian sacks to pot up the perimeter plants, using pond soil (heavier so doesn't leach out too much in the water) definitely aesthetically more pleasing and more flexible to position.