Just when you have finished building your pond and think of putting beautiful aquatic plants to enhance its beauty or purchase a lake home that you find to have lilies and the water front, realize that extracting or removing them can be very difficult. These stunning looking plants besides adding beauty to the pond or lake front also create ruffles inside the pond. Hence excessive growth can lead to overgrowth and therefore need proper trimming and chopping or chemical treatment from time to time.
Before making a final decision of removing these, one need to decide whether you want to remove the entire lot or just want to trim or treat some. Do you also know these lily pads do have a role in improving the pond’s ecosystem?
First and foremost, plants release oxygen inside the pond that is beneficial for the aquatic species and enable them to thrive freely. Also, it’s important that you maintain proper movement inside the water and there is no stagnation inside the pond. Lily pads help in aerating the water for flora and fauna.
Now the question is when is the right time to start getting rid of Lily Pads
Once you realise that around 30% of the base area is affected, then it’s time to trim it and if the covered area is around 50% then you should chop it off. These lily pads act as a filter to the pond water and helps in keeping the pond clean and comfortable for other plants and animals. These also offer protection from sunlight, thereby controlling the growth of algae and hiding places for protection against potential predators. If you prefer to kill the root system of the lily pads, Aquacide Pellets applied after growth starts to occur is the best time.
Now it’s time to decide the method of extraction-Manual Vs. Chemical Treatment
You will find many chemical solutions and treatments available in the market for the effective treatment of these lily pads. Aquacide Pellets are a great systemic root killing product that is safe for wildlife.
Manual extraction of these depends upon how deeply they are submerged in water. Trimming them from the top will also be a temporary solution. You might also witness sudden growth of fully grown lily pads within a couple of weeks.
In case of overgrown lily pads, the use of chemical treatment is also advised. Hence, we suggest you use Aquacide Pellets or Shore Klear with Cygnet. Shore Klear (Glyphosate) and Aquacide Pellets (2,4-D) are eco-friendly product and used to treat different species of aquatic plants in ponds.
You can also try out an effective method – Just mix glyphosate with cygnet and spray the mixture thoroughly onto the lily pad leaves or broadcast the Aquacide Pellets around the growth. These methods are extremely operative and provide relief within about three weeks.