Using Duck Pond Water for Garden. ?'s

[randomchick]

Quote:
It seems logical now that I can look at it from point of view. Thanks for the help

 

[gmendoza]

It seems logical now that I can look at it from point of view. Thanks for the help

You can direct apply it at the roots ONLY! we use duck pond water every year and narry a plant died so far.

Reuse and recycle!!

 

[QuackerJackFarms]

I use mine on my roses and they are beautiful!

I read the other day on here, someone saying they have a sump pump they use to get the water out. I thought that was an awesome idea too.

 

[Tivona]

I use my duck water for a variety of plants in my garden. One thing to keep in mind though is that fresh manure is not safe for food plants that are eaten raw. From what I have read it is usually recommended that any food crop getting duck water should be things like trees, bushes, plants that are only eaten cooked, or things that have the food part high off the ground (artichokes, sunflower, etc). Things like strawberries, lettuce, or carrots are not recommended because of microorganisms. The water its self should be added directly to the soil, not on the leaves. I have used my duck water on blueberries, rhubarb, the lawn, flowers,and fruit trees. I have never had a problem with burning and every thing looks better then when I started. Any water that I don't use on plants goes to the compost. And my compost is down hill and next to the duck pen and both are at the back of the garden. Makes it fairly easy to dispose of the water one way or the other.

 

[larkflying]

The ducks and geese have turned my orchard into plush pasture -- looks like we planted, weeded and fertilized. It is AMAZING how nice the grass is. I have the plastic swimming pools, and we just dump them out, and move them onto fresh grass daily, or twice daily depending on the weather. The water drains away so quickly that there isn't any muddy spot for them to play in, and make messes out of. As long as you move the swimming pools once a day, there isn't any problem and you can't tell where the pools were. That is also so the grass still grows under the pool . . . if you left them in the same place then there would be big circles of dead grass.

We move the ducks and geese around the property to take care of pests and keep the grass down. I figure they will improve any ground that they are on -- I'm excited to see what the field does once I rotate them off of it and into their spring quarters . . . I wouldn't have the ducks and chickens anywhere that I am actually going to use for vegetables that year though -- too many health concerns. Same with the "tea" from their pond play . . .

Good for you to actually try to use it -- those pumps sound like a great idea . . .

 

[70%cocoa]

All my duck pond water gets drained to a sump and then pumped (using a sump pump) through a greywater filter and then onto the vegetable garden and fruit trees via a greywater drip irrigation system. The drip irrigation lines are under mulch so they aren't in contact with leaves, only roots. All my vegetables (root crops. fruiting crops and leafy crops) have thrived on the duck water. My garden is full of worms as well.

If you apply it at the soil level (rather than spraying it onto leaves) it's absolutely safe and very good for the plants.

This is the dripperline I used: http://www.netafimusa.com/wastewater/products/bioline-dripperline
The filter: http://www.irrigray.com/Filtration.html
The pump: I used something of about this capacity: http://www.sumppumpsdirect.com/Superior-Pump-93501-Sewage-Pump/p4575.html

 

[Duckadia]

Our water gets pumped out onto trees and grass. We have one particular tree that stayed the same size since it was planted (5 years ago) until we started putting the duck water on it mid last year and it has doubled in size. Amazing stuff the duck water is!

 

[m.kitchengirl]

I used duck water on all my gardens last year & nothing died, quite the opposite, everything thrived!
I moved the first of June, but had started a lot of my plants before I moved, knowing I wanted them in my garden when I got here.
My tomatoes never really did well after the move. In fact, they were dead. I started pouring duck pool water on them just because I had SO MUCH and didn't want to over water my plants, and the duck water brought them back to life! No lie. They went from brown & sickly to putting out tomatoes - In LATE SEPTEMBER/ EARLY OCTOBER!!!!
My greens were greener, my beets bigger & healthier (I know, because I did 3 rounds, the first pre-ducks, the second & third post-ducks, and the difference was incredible.

I used pools with & without drains added, the drain is nice. I didn't glue the drain/hose in, but used a screw device like Amiga said. I also got (late in the season) one of those pump sprayer things that I would fill from the hose in the duck pool & then spray the garden. Worked great, and did wonders.
The first few months I was lugging water & changing pools by the bucket full. That was fine, too. A great work out! I pour/spray AROUND the plants, on the ground, not on the plant itself. But, I change my pools daily in the summer (at least once) and that may account for the lack of nitrogen burn.

 

[Amiga]

I was thinking about the different results using duck water on gardens, and I wondered what the differences are.

Some possibilities are that it was not the duck nutrients, but an overabundance of water (I needed to reroute the water from the grape arbor to a lower garden bed because there was too much water for the grapes).

Another is the concentration of duck stuff in the water. I estimated that in the summer, the water has the nutrients from one duck for 1.5 gallons of water on average.

Perhaps it's the soil type - clay, sandy, or loamy. Our soil is loamy and has abundant organic matter in it.

 

[pysankigirl]

reviving an old thread rather than creating a new one...

We have put in an irrigation system hooked up to a bucket that we can manually dump water into for the water from our 400 gallon duck pond that we built for our 4 ducks and 2 geese (which we are emptying and refilling with rainwater once a week.) Seems to be working really well, and we have amazing growth. (Our tomatoes are over 8 feet tall!)

But I think I need to amend with potash and Bonemeal because it’s all top growth and not enough fruiting. Anyone else using Duck water to irrigate their garden with? any ideas on additional soil ammendments needed?