Skylark Wrote: This stuff is driving me crazy in the old smithy pond - for some reason, touch wood, we eradicated it here in the cottage pond & I'm not too sure how! It's a never ending battle scooping it all out, endless, slimey strands of the stuff! I was wondering if any of you have ponds & this weed & how you manage it? Straw bales I've heard work, but we did try that once & it made no difference, the blanket weed just grew all over it!!!!

Any tips please

Barley straw bales are for green algae Skylark.

There are some chemical solutions to blanket weed but I prefer to get rid of it the hard way which means dipping one's hand in the pond!

i have blanket weed every year, ive tried all sorts to get rid of it but with no luck, i tend to just pull it out and leave it on the side for a couple of days then put it on the compost heap. my pond is quite shaded but it still grows like wildfire, i think that once you have it its impossible to get rid of it completly unless you start from scratch with all new plants, and even then you cant garentee it wont appear again as the spores are carried on plants and wildlife. i think its just a case of keep it down to a minimum any way you can. good luck.

Well Toadletfan I never knew that about watercress! Fortunately I threw a bit of watercress from a salad I was eating into our pond years ago and it's grown there ever since

We do get some blanket weed but not right across the pond. Maybe the watercress is doing the job on it's own but we also put a 'magnet' on our filter as well years ago so it might be a mixture of things that we have tried.

We get blanket weed on the water feature and on the filter top but nowhere else so we can just about cope with that. It is a pain though when you get it all over the place. I hate taking it out because all the little creatures get caught up in it. I leave it on the edge of the pond for a day before lobbing it onto our compost heap to give them a chance to get back in the pond.

If you can add a container such as a plastic tub with an overflow, you could make a 'vegetable filter' and really harness the power of the cress!

Blanketweed enjoys the high oxygen content of moving water and does really well on water features and especially lovely sunny waterfalls. Oddly enough, if you had the same feature beneath an indoor aquarium it's known as an 'algae scrubber' and used for the removal of nitrates and phosphates

What algae really thrive on is tapwater - areas of the country with old victorian plumbing have phosphate added to prevent any lead dissolving and often nitrates are present too. This hard, alkaline highly oxygenated water is perfect for both green water and blanket weed growth. Then if you add the nutrient inputs of fish you can see that it's practically inevitable!

Our pond is in full sun & I just don’t have time to try & keep it clear of blanket weed; on the margins I have Brooklime, Wild & Cultivated Water Cress, Starwort, Marsh Marigold, Bog Bean, Water Cinquefoil, Common Reed, Flag Iris, Greater Spearwort & waiting to go in Jointed Bur Reed.

As the water levels fluctuate some of these are in the water all the time while some like the Bog Bean & Marsh Cinquefoil are stretching to reach it.
Whirligigs & Diving Beetle seem to be surviving, I have lifted blanket weed off the pond like a heavy sheet but after 10 days away it is as thick as ever.

If left will the plants which have all been put in this year eventually draw out enough nutrients to eradicate the blanket weed? I’m loath to clear the pond again as the weed is so thick that even if left on the edge Whirligigs & Diving Beetle would never make their way through the dense carpet to get back to the pond.