Pocket Ponds In the Homestead Food Forest: Efficient Technique for Digging the Hole (Vlog)
Hey Y'all!
I've been super excited about this little project we started and have been slowly chipping away at here and there over the last week.
Rainwater catchment in a 55 gal barrel on the homestead
When I lived at The Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, which was the last home of the Parent's of the Back to the Land Movement, Helen & Scott Nearing, I became so inspired by Scott and Helen's organized, methodical, step by step attitude.
One thing that I loved is that Scott set himself to dig 10 wheelbarrow-fulls of soil out of a couple acre pond that he was building. Digging a pond is a huge undertaking, but 10 wheelbarrows a day isn't really too much to ask! We're taking this method here on the homestead as we start on our first Pocket Pond.
Pond as it was dug this morning. You can see we made quite a bit of headway this evening using Ini's bucket technique.
Nowhere near 2 acres, our pond is dubbed a "Pocket Pond" in permaculture lingo.
It will sit nestled in and amongst our demonstration Food Forest and will have a spillway that goes into swales in the annual garden. I am so excited for the life that it will bring into this niche, as well as provide water and habitat for birds, bees and other insects, tadpoles, fish, aquatic plants and so much more!
Juneberry in the Food forest
In this video, we talk a bit about our Food Forest and show the lay of the land. We also share the DIGGING technique that Ini came up with to make the work a lot more efficient and therefore easier. He's always thinking of ways to WORK SMARTER not harder and this is one of his latest. I did it today and the work flew by as we were working together!
Hazel in the Food Forest
We still have a lot to learn about pond building and our next step will be to concrete the inside of the pond.
I have to research different aspects of pond shape (how gradual to make the slope, do I make little niches for microhabitats for baby fish, tadpoles, etc!). If you've made your own small pond, please let us know what you learned/would do differently! I'd also love to hear people's favorite aquatic (edible, beautiful, functional, or otherwise) plants! Basically, if you've created a small pond, talk to us :) ~ !
Yarrow in the Food forest right next to the Pocket Pond
Thanks for watching!
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I learned so much from you again! I love the idea of the spillway. That is so smart! I have been pushing for a few small ponds on our property, and this gives me something new to consider. Tackling it day by day is so appealing!
I have no idea if this will be of any help to you but here are some photos of our old pond. The post is crappy but the photos are decent. https://www.walkerland.ca/garden-ponds/
We didn't build this pond but I spent a lot of time working on it. Frogs really like shallow areas and ledges that they can hang out on, especially where you have plants for them to hide beneath. They really loved hanging out in the shallow waterfall area.
It had a liner instead of concrete. The walls were not sloping/graduated enough. You can see the liner where the rocks have fallen. Definitely a design flaw. I was forever reaching in and adjusting rocks.
thank you for your tips!! excellent! these are the kind of tid bits i'm looking for from learned experience. checking out your post now! and glad you enjoyed the video.
update: omg love your pond's landscaping! will be bookmarking this for the plants you recommend. did you have any favs that you employed? you did a fantastic job. it looks so filled-in, diverse and lush. love the wildlife!!
I just recently learned that you can eat the young chutes of the hosta. All those edibles sitting there and at the time I had no idea! This pond was not done with edibles in mind - it was all about ornamentals ... so I think I might do things differently ...maybe. Ornamentals play an important role too but some are so much more versatile than others.
I loved all of the plants! I am really no help there!
haha cool no worries! just saw you put up a vid today too. hopefully it will download okay and i can watch it. i've heard the hasta thing too but haven't tried it yet :)
What a great way to manage your water. This will be so helpful for you food forest. Well done @mountainjewel! Can't wait to see it!
thanks mamita!! we're pretty excited! much of it should be completed by your next visit :)
We dug a pond in our front yard a few years ago, but it's just for the goldfish. We used heavy plastic for the liner, but the sun eats it up after a few years, so this year we're going to install an EPDM pond liner before we let it fill up, they last much longer. We wouldn't be able to use a cement liner because of the frost heave here, it would crack the concrete.
I didn't realize there was so much intentionality to it. I sort of thought you were able to just wing it. Looking forward to seeing the finished product!
Excellent way to store rain water. I can't imagine you are doing all this by yourself, it's a little unusual for people living in cities :-)
this is RIGHT UP...my alley!!!!!!! i love digging!!!! pocket ponds...and swales....GALORE!!!!!!! thanks for this ...i loved every minute! brilliant pic axe and bucket moves there! i dig it!
I am slowly working on another pond. Right now it is my catch al for limbs and downed trees. It will take some time to make it a tropical oasis. Good inspiration git here in your post. Thanks. 🐓🐓
I know you said it isn't going to be two acres but how big do you think it will be when done?
Also that is a lot of rocks! I think you guys are doing a pretty good job of it considering the conditions. Our property has basically no rocks, it is all clay. I actually wish we had more rocks!