When in flower a water-lily is truly one of the most beautiful sights to see. However, when not in flower apart from providing convenient resting places for frogs, the lily pads can seem to get out of hand and be just starving a pond of light and possibly oxygen too. So, if lily pads have become a problem in your pond – what can be said about how to get rid of lily pads?
Before starting to clear the pond of lily pads you might want to decide exactly whether or not you want to clear the whole lot out. The reasons for this are that water lilies, and therefore the lily pads, serve a few important functions in your pond of value to its overall ecosystem.
Firstly, plants are actually excellent oxygenators of pond water. If you have a stagnant pond with no natural inlet/outlet or artificial pumping system, lily pads can actually be doing a very important job aerating the water for other plants and your prized pond fish in particular.
When to Start Getting Rid of Lily Pads
Water lily pads also act as a natural filter to the pond water, again helping to keep it clean and habitable for other plants and animals. Finally, thinking about those fish again, the lily pads afford them both shade from the sun and hiding places for protection against predators like our old friend the Heron and the neighbors cat etc. So, perhaps you might want to think in terms of thinning out the lily pads rather than necessarily getting rid of them all.
If more than 30% of the pond water surface is affected by lily pads, then it is time to start thinking about thinning them out, if the coverage is 50% or more – then it really is time to start getting rid of lily pads.
This will be especially important if you do have fish in your pond as a large area of the surface water covered by lily pads will mean that the fish will find it more difficult to feed off insects on the reduced ‘open’ water surface area.
Pulling Out Vs. Chemicals
There are chemical solutions to getting rid of lily pads, but we’ll come back to that in a moment. First off just try pulling the lily pads out. Now then, depending on whether or not you built the pond or if it just came with the property you’re living in – are the water lilies in pots?
If they are pulling the whole lily plant out will be simplicity itself – pot and all. If not, for anything but the very youngest of water lilies, their roots will have spread out considerably and you could be faced with a very tiresome job.
Pulling the lily pads out of the pond may well also depend on just how deep it is too! Cutting the lily pads while leaving the roots in place will only give you a temporary respite from them. Depending on the season – full size lily pads could be back in place within just a couple of weeks.
If you have to resort to a chemical solution to get rid of your lily pads, use a glyphosate based product. Glyphosate is used to manage many water-plants in ponds and will work well on lily pads and it is also known to be environmentally friendly. To target the lily pads mix it with a surface acting detergent compound and spray the mixture directly onto the lily pad leaves.
Photo by Breelynne, Creative Commons Attribution License