The most important part of keeping our pond clean are the plants. The first year we had our pond, we struggled continuously with algae. Our roots weren't established and the roots are what is needed to filter the water. It's important to choose a variety of color when picking out pond plants because each plant absorbs nutrients through roots down in the segments or leaves. The plants help regulate the growth of algae by limiting the excess amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and sulfur. Basically the plants absorb all of those nutrient which limits leftovers for the algae to be able to grow.
There are many different aquatic plants that can be used to filter your water. We found some to be too invasive and others to work better at filtering.
You can click on each photo to read more about each plant.
The plants need to be cared for just as if they were in the garden or around your landscape. When they die back in the winter, remove the dead parts and trim back the plant. In the summer, when everything is in full bloom and the plants are exploding, we find that we need to remove some of the plants as they begin to take over. The mint and seep monkeyflower have to be watched or it will take over and the water hyacinths are one of the primary plants that help keep our pond clean but they will multiply quickly. You can keep them in the pond but if it begins to overwhelm the pond, we feed them to our chickens, goats, and rabbits. It's a win/win. We found that by adding the water hyacinths to the top of our waterfalls where our bio filters are, they add an extra filter assisting with keeping the pond clean. You can read more about the swim pond here.
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