Pond help

[BooseysMom]

Hi,
We have a small wildlife pond planted up with water shamrock and other water plants I can't remember the names of. We have had a frog make his home in there which is great, but lately the water shamrock has completely taken over and grown up all around the inside of the liner. The leaves have blocked out alot of the sunlight and I found a dead water boatman and no sign of the frog or anything else living in there. I have cleared some of the surface leaves but when I pull it, it pulls the whole lot as it has blanketed the sides. Should I cut back all of it around the sides at the end of the summer, or leave it as it is in case wildlife uses it to over winter?
Also, there's an iris which never flowered this year and it was put in last spring. What should I do about that?
Thank you to anyone who has any advice.

The frog wouldn’t be there at this time of year. He’s mainly a land animal, returning to the pond to breed. Some overwinter in the pond, and some take advantage of the cool in hot weather, but mostly they’ll have left the pond to hunt for prey on land.

wait till autumn to clear the pond. Then leave everything on the side for a day or two so any creatures can crawl out back into the pond. Leave just enough vegetation to allow for growth next year.

Your pond is looking perfectly healthy, by the way

Thanks Mere
I have already had a bit of a clean out and left the weed on the side, but I can't see anything living in it anyway.. just a dead water boatman. The frog was there for a few weeks. DS went mad when he first saw its head poking up!

What about the iris? Does it need feeding?

Thanks 😊

@MereDintofPandiculation I've got a small pond in a galvanised tank, obviously the frogs here haven't got the message, there's currently 3 almost permanently in and around my waterlily.
I do see them out and about in the garden occasionally but they almost always return to the pond.

Don’t feed anything in a pond, it will destroy your water balance. Over abundance of nutrients is killing our waterways - have a look at what is happening to the R Wye.

The only thing that seems to govern iris flowering is how much sunshine they get. Best to regard them as useful places for damselfly nymphs to metamorphose and regard flowers as a bonus.

How many frogs do you have in breeding season, or is it not a breeding pond? Torchlight survey in early evening is revealing

At this time of year we find frogs up in the moors a long way from any pond. They do need it fairly damp, so in a dry garden they’d spend more time in the water.

@BooseysMom I presume the Iris is I pseudacorus, Yellow Flag? I f it’s not happy in the pond, I’d consider moving it to damp soil at the edge

Ideally you shouldn't mess with wildlife ponds until Autumn but I cleared some oxygenating plant out of mine last week as it was blocking out all of the light.

I tend to have lots of frogs in my pond all year and had 15 batches of frogspawn in the Spring but haven't seen any frogs for a week or two and most of my tadpoles don't have any legs yet which I think is down to the weather.

My irises flowered for the first time in three years this year during the long hot spell we had in June.

@MereDintofPandiculation the pond is very new, only planted about 2 months ago. I’d seen the occasional frog in the garden before then, but these 3 moved in very quickly.
I shall be interested to see what happens in the breeding season.

The frog will be around but probably in the undergrowth and leaf litter around the garden. With your pond plants... Just reduce them back to the size you want. They soon bounce back after cutting, so don't be afraid to go for it. Be careful not to puncture your liner.

I’ve had a wildlife pond for years and I regularly remove plant growth in the water during the summer months to allow light in and to accommodate water boatmen and pond skaters who need a clear area of water.
In the Autumn I give the marginals a good cutting back or even take them out, halve their size and replant them.
A wildlife pond needs managing otherwise it will become overgrown and just revert to a dense bog.

Some years we have up to 10 frogs, sometimes just a couple, sometimes we have a couple that hang around all year, often they all disappear for long periods of time. They don't spend as much time in ponds as people tend to think though.
If when you pull the plant the whole thing comes out just chop off what you want to get rid of. Anything from a third to two thirds of the pond should ideally be covered by plants in late summer but a lot of things grow back strongly once spring arrives.
Don't feed the iris, too much nitrogen is bad for blooming and bad for the pond. I'd just wait and see if it flowers next year.
Looks like a great pond!

Our best year we had 169 frogs. It would have been a problem to have all of those in the pond all summer.

Since then, we’ve had newts move in, so now have far fewer frogs, since newts treat frogspawn as caviar.

Hi Mere yes yellow flag I think. It's in a pond pot on a shelf. Only put in last year. No sign of flowers this year.

The frogs so far haven't had frog spawn. They just like hiding!

169 frogs is mental!! I keep hoping newts move in.

One thing I noticed today were tiny black leeches. I remember these were in a big pond we had at my childhood home. They were massive though and had to be removed. Could these be killing the water boatmen?

Thanks so much and thanks for the advice 😊

Thanks for this advice 😊

Excellent thanks 😊 I have removed some of the water shamrock to let the light in and hopefully give water boatmen a space to swim

No, the most pond leeches are detritus feeders, doing a valuable cleaning job. Unless they’re squareheaded black things only about 1cm long, in which case they’re planarians (flatworms) eating tiny living or dead organisms, and still don’t need removing.

Leeches are a close relative of earthworms.

Oh that's interesting, thanks. I wonder what the big ones were then which used to attach themselves to my brothers legs when he was cleaning it out? They were like something from a tropical swamp!

Horse leech? Eats midge larvae and small snails, apparently sometimes leaves water in search of earthworms.

Medicinal leech is rare/endangered in the UK

You will be safe to to cut it all back. Pond plants are pretty prolific and will bounce back fine. The frog will be around. They spend more time in the undergrowth on land. Be careful not to pierce your pond liner when cutting the plants back.

DRS1970
Thanks, that's great advice 😊It's all very overgrown now so will cut it back. The plants have rooted themselves onto the sides of the plastic liner so I need to be careful I don't pull the lot out! Saw the frog the other day so yes, he's still around.