I’ve wanted a water feature/pond for some time, but I put it off because of safety concerns with the boys.

Although it’s not fancy, we kind of have one now. In reality, the “water feature” is more of a deep puddle, but I see it as the start of an interesting project and am heartened that my husband said he’d like to put in a real pond next year.

Keeping Bugs Out Of The Pond

It’s lovely to have water in the landscape, but the one thing I never considered very much was how to keep the bugs out of them. After a day, there were over a dozen beetles struggling to climb out, and numerous daddy-long-legs met their demise in the shallow depths. I also noticed a whole bunch of mosquito larvae, and we know we don’t want those in there. So I decided I need to figure out the best way to keep a water feature pest-free before we delve into something bigger.

Mosquitos

I know one of the best ways to keep mosquitoes out of the water is to keep it moving. Ideally, we would have a little pump to recirculate it. But our “pond” is different. It’s just a small pit in the ground, lined with a trash bag so we can keep a few native tadpoles and snails.

I recently picked up some Mosquito Dunks. These are floating disks of Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis, a bacterium that kills mosquito larvae, but won’t hurt the tadpoles, snails or fish. I had to break the dunk into about ¼ of the disk for this small area, and the nice thing is it will last a month. I think we’ll be good since I have 8 of them in the package! The other thing we’re going to do is pick up a couple of goldfish or guppies. (The boys are thrilled to add them to their collection.) They do a pretty good job of eating the larvae so between the dunk and the fish, I think we should have the blood sucking insect problem remedied.

Beetles and Honey Bees

The beetles, for us, are another bother. Obviously, they need the moisture, but they were diving in the water like a bunch of boys at a swimming hole. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get out. The boys scooped them out with a little shovel, but they soon figured out that if they set a rock at an angle the beetles can crawl out on their own.

The same goes with honey bees. They are notoriously drawn to any moisture, from hot tubs to pet water bowls, and they can be very bothersome. But if you have some way for honey bees to escape the water, you have fewer problems with dead ones.

Having water in the garden is a lovely feature. It’s definitely better when it’s flowing water, but even this little puddle is a lot of fun… as long as we can keep the creepy crawlies out of it.