The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Compacting a pond floor

How to make the bottom of a pond retain water

There are several ways to get a dirt hole to retain water, but we usually like to start with the least expensive methods and then work our way up if necessary.

Anna's first attempt includes a layer of jewel weed and generous foot stomping to compact the future pond floor.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Jewel weed?
Maybe you're planning to answer this in one of your next posts, but I'm curious--what does the jewel weed do to help seal it?
Comment by Jake — Mon Jul 29 11:37:23 2013
Sealing a pond with jewelweed
Jake --- The longer version is coming up in tomorrow's post, but the short version is that any high-nitrogen organic matter will work to help gley a pond through anaerobic bacterial action. The jewelweed was handy and soft on my bare feet. :-)
Comment by anna — Mon Jul 29 13:10:23 2013
I'd have never thought of that
I would never have thought of adding a nitrogen rich source to help bacteria gley the wetland! Brilliant!
Comment by Eric in Japan — Tue Jul 30 06:50:29 2013
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