My property includes a small bit of an artificial lake that will be partially drained next year for a few weeks while there’s work done on the earth dam. I’ve read that pond soil accumulates all sorts of nutrients and is beneficial for fruit trees once it aerates for a while.
It would be pretty cheap and easy to ask the construction guys to scoop up some pond soil and dump it near my orchard. The orchard, and I’m assuming the pond as well, is on fairly heavy clay soil so I’ve had to build mounds and amend the existing soil with compost.
Is it worth the hassle to get the pond soil even though its available easily but likely clayish?
How long should it sit?
What’s the best use for it? How do I incorporate it?
My experience is that it is very good after it has set 3-5 years. Usually i dump it over the back of the dam into ditches etc…It is extremely rich and frequently weeds try to reclaim it quickly. Grass grows up there a short time afterwards in year 3. The first 2 years it is not usable for anything and nothing grows in it besides weeds. It is awfully rich for fruit trees. If you dont mind waiting it is good soil. https://growingfruit.org/t/ponds-are-a-great-investment/7033 .It is pretty sloppy when it comes out of the pond as you can see here.
Black muck or organic soil is common in my area and it is used agriculturally in the wetlands where it forms by creating a network of ditches and draining it. It then becomes exceptionally useful for growing onions but is also used for lettuce and col crops a lot.
Marshy muck-soil locations that weren’t converted to ag used to be a good place to hide pot plants because the vegetation that thrives there is low and thick (no trees). I used to get fantastic growth in that black stuff by laboriously (and as quietly as possible) removing the existing plants, including roots, and building mounds with it- no 3-5 years required, even though it stunk when first dug. I just needed to wait for it to drain. The crazy vigor did reduce THC content somewhat (although the buds looked spectacular), which probably says something about how it might influence brix of fruit trees.
But my muck soil may not have been the same as yours. Fine soil (clay) does tend to settle in low points and your pond muck could have any combination of clay and organic matter, it might even be heavier than the soil your trees are growing in. The OM is probably as colloidal (fine) as clay so you must be careful about using the muck as a top dressing. Just make sure it isn’t finer textured than what they are growing in because finer soil over course interferes with capillary flow and will create new drainage problems.
I’m wondering if the long wait required of Clark’s muck doesn’t have to do with the massive quantities and the inability for it to drain. I prefer to know the whys when I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing. How is that muck changing as it sits that makes it more useful for growing plants in?
Anyway, if you need to clear the muck out of your pond to stop it from becoming too shallow over time there has to be a way to put that muck to use, but fruit trees do not require rich soils and too much of a good thing can be damaging to the quality of the fruit and create rampant vegetative growth. However, the organic matter of muck should improve the drainage of excessively clay soils. Good drainage is always helpful for growing fruit trees, even wetland blueberries grow on hillocks.
As a side note for what it is worth i tend to bury logs in muck piles to turn those back to dirt in the same amount of time. We forget years later when we even built compost piles because we have built so many. Many of those were buried in the muck along with ditches we filled. In places my once 1 foot deep or few inches of black loam soil is now 2 or 3 feet deep. If a ditch was there it may be 10 feet deep with black dirt now in places. If i was alive a few hundred years i could replace the damage done here in the dirty 30’s. Good agriculture takes time. In the dirty thirties most people are aware poor agricultural techniques lead to the loss of over 20 feet of loam off the rich fields in Kansas leaving many farms with only clay and a shallow layer of loam. People are still paying the price of past generations misdeeds. People do what they have to do with the best they can do at that time. Agriculture is hopefully improving overall but i can only speak for what goes on here at my farm.
My guess would be that the bottom of a pond on heavy clay is even finer clay of little use for fruit trees. I’d spend my money on some good well drained soil brought in from elsewhere to build mounds for your fruit trees. There’s no way I’d waste money digging slime out of the bottom of a pond.
But the truth is there’s no way to know without checking out the material. If possible retrieve a 5 gal bucket of material out of the pond and see what you think. If it’s better than what you have now for fruit tree mounds then maybe it’s useable.
’ I’ve read that pond soil accumulates all sorts of nutrients’
Something to ponder- ponds also accumulate all sorts of bad stuff too…
Very old pond/lake- this has seen many many events of chemical rainfall and accumulated. If u remember not too long ago we had acid rain and it was killing trees and killed some lakes. Who knows what kinds of chemicals were in the air in the 60s and 70s. Who knows what pesticides and herbicides…etc etc. Who knows nowadays either… clouds come from all over… carrying all kinds of things.
Barring all of that… lets say it is full of nutrients and super powered soil… are u wanting to grow massive trees? Do u want all that extra pruning work?
I asked last year a similar question about roadway ditch soil. I know locally that mine are chock full of leaves that rot and the state road cleans them out and puts them in dump trucks and treats it as waste. Eroding mountains…leaves and soaking and rotting make a really nice humus soil… however someone pointed out what if a car drives by and leaks oil or antifreeze… Which led me to think… maybe the state road sprayed that hillside in the 70s or 80s… or 90s… and that ditch is full of old chemicals…
A known pond on a farm like Clarks that he probably built himself is likely much different than an old pond/lake that maybe they lined with top fill from a shady destination. How many times have the banks been sprayed… how many chemicals were used to stop algae blooms.
Who knows what kind of fallout will happen after these wildfires… its in the air…it is eventually going to come down.
Literally caught an old guy dumping motor oil on a relatives property. Have seen people with leftover weed chemicals they chuck in an alley. At the time that was common just like littering in the 70s. The days of oil , grease, gas, diesel, and antifreeze along the roadways is coming to an end. Asphalt will likely be outlawed in the next 30 years along with the oil burners. Maybe the next generation will have their utopia finally but i have some doubts. There will likely be new problems to solve. Ocean fish do contain mercury it is a valid point. Everything runs down hill into our water. In a nearby town nearly every time it floods raw sewage winds up in the river. The Kansas river is polluted badly with chemicals you cannot even imagine.
I know in the 70s it was fairly normal to burn trash… I know where i grew up we didnt have any garbage trucks. You either burned it or had your own personal ‘garbage dump’. On certain parts of my property i find old glass chlorox bottles and pop cans and beer cans from the 50s and 60s.
My job was to burn our trash. Plastics and whatever would catch fire would be burned in that burn barrel. I dumped it in the creek…but that was normal… for everyone i think.
My dad used motor oil for weeds alot. Also to keep dust down on our road. That was normal…
I have seen alot of folks that use that coloring to make their ponds look prettier. When i was a kid my dad took me fishing at a pay lake and instead of brown water after it rained…they poured something in it to make it blue.
I have seen the aesthetic ponds in front of houses also use that coloring to make their ponds look pretty.
Obvious that some spray the banks as well… so that everyone can see their pretty pond.
Alot of garages flush the antifreeze down the toilets or pour down the sink drains. In some cities its still ok to do so. It varies.
My first job in College was to mop the kitchen floors of our cafeteria. 1 gallon of bleach every meal. So 3 gallons of bleach per day X years and years and years and years… it all went down a drain… then i guess they ‘filter’ it?
Growing up in the 70s i remember those trucks with guys in the back that had sprayers…and they would drive down the road and spray the heck out of the banks so that they didnt have to mow it or maybe trim trees for power lines. I remember it was brown as far as you could see… all dead.
You could get a gallon of the stuff from those guys if u caught them at the right spot. My dad got all kinds of it and sprayed on multiflora.
So yea…i prob better not use ditch dirt… i forgot about the bad things that people used to do. I think we all forgot.
Outta sight…outta mind is what my mom used to say.
When I was a kid it was normal practice for the highways dept to use tanker trucks of oil to suppress dust on the local dirt roadways (even on roads beside lakes used for drinking water).
We also burnt or dumped our garbage in the 60’s & 70’s on our property. This was considered normal from the time when the farm was first homesteaded. We used to have mounds with glass jars and bottles from the 1920’s and 30’s around the place when I was a kid.
I am going to be stopping by your private residences Friday evening weekly to collect your litter bug tax payments of 10 figs, 40 persimmons, 3 tomatoes and a pear.
