Tidying Up and Making a Pond

Two good days this weekend meant that I managed to get quite a few jobs done on the plot.  As you may know from the previous posts, we've recently taken on a bit more room which is giving me plenty to do over the autumn and winter.  The second shift this weekend saw me splitting my time between the original section and the new section of the plot.  I'll always aim to keep the original plot up to scratch before developing the new section.  First off the list was to lift all the slabs and weed barrier between all the beds, scrape it all down and remove any weeds that had tried to take root, before placing it all back down again.  For something that only takes about half an hour, it makes a big difference, and I have found that I only need to do it perhaps twice a year to keep the paths well maintained.

The big development this weekend was starting work on the new pond.  I've always wanted a pond, either at home or on the allotment.  I think the allotment makes the more sense at the moment.  Other plot holders have small ponds and they are teaming with wildlife.  With the acquisition of the new section of plot, it means that we finally have room for one.  

I've chosen to put it at the front of the new plot.  Allotment ponds don't need to be anything massive, and often people use old sinks or pre-formed hard plastic pond liners, not even 1 meter in length.  I decided to do something slightly different and to buy some pond liner material.  

I started by digging down a couple spade depths and shaping out the form of the pond.  Conscious that I wanted to have a 'deep' end and a 'shallow' end, I scraped out the topsoil accordingly.  

The pond liner I bought come with a large sheet of underlay too.  It was far bigger than I needed (over 3 square meters!) but rather than waste it, I folded it up into quarters which give me the perfect size to line the excavated hole with.  The underlay helps protect the main liner from any sort of sharp objects piercing through and causing a leak.

Next came the install of the main liner itself.  The smallest I could find at a reasonable price was 2.5 meters squared.  Way bigger than I needed, but having too much liner is a better position to be in rather than not having enough.  I pushed the liner down into the hole, covering the underlay, then started to fill it with a couple of watering cans of rain water collected from my IBC tank.

At this point, it all looked a bit of a mess, but with the added weight of the water pushing the line into the shape of the hole underneath, I could start trimming around the edge.  I didn't want to cut the line too close to the waters edge because I wanted to put stones and pebbles around it, to help give it a bit more of a natural look.  Once it was all trimmed back, I carried on adding the water until it was just short of completely full.  Finally, I collected what stoned I could from around the plot and put them around the edge of the liner.

For from being the finished article, it's still pretty good I think.  And it's great to be able to make a start on the project.  The next steps to complete the build will be to collect a load more smaller stones and pebbles to arrange around the edge, eventually hiding all the black plastic liner on the surface.  I also was to get some sand or grit to put on the bottom of the deep part, before adding more small stones around the shallow area to make a beach.  The final touches will be a couple of oxygenating plants to help keep the water from getting too stagnant and a couple of plants around the edges of the plastic liner before just leaving the rest of it to nature.

So that brings to an end another weekend of activity on the plot.  Things are quietening down, but there are still plenty of jobs to do.  I don't think that will ever not be the case.  Until next time, happy growing!