How to Get Rid of Cattails – What Are The Basics?
Cattails are a familiar phenomenon within many North American settings, most especially happening in or around bodies of water, and initially seeming fairly innocuous. Initially you might see one of these plants and dismiss it. You may just believe that same thing the next day, and the day after that, and perhaps several days following that, till that one day you peer outside, and the whole pond is overgrown to the point where you require an air-boat to navigate it as if you were situated in the everglades.
So, now that you have been invaded by the evil army of the cattail, what sort of offensive can you mount? Would you organize your army and go in with guns (or pesticides) blazing? Or will you opt guerrilla tactics? The methods are totally for you to decide, since no matter which technique you decide on, the plants aren’t sentient, therefore they will not see you coming, indicating that you will constantly have the element of surprise. That also entails that you can probably get rid of that camouflage and remove the paint from your face. Those binoculars and the gas mask probably won’t be needed either.
The options available to you are many in the area of cattail destruction, and naturally, since the pond belongs to you (unless for an unknown purpose you’ve set out to attack the neighbor’s pond), you’re free to pick any of these techniques:
Physical Removal – You are naturally, welcome to try pulling the cattails up by yourself. If you do that, try to get to them when they’re young, otherwise they will take sturdy roots and end up very hard to pull. This would additionally turn into a all order, because by the time that you start eliminating them, odds are they have already overrun the pond, and there will be a ton of them.
Cutting – You may chop down those cattails, though keeping mind that it’s smart to chop them somewhere around an inch under the water line so as to deprive them of oxygen and they will die.
Lowering the Water Line – Cattails, just like anything else, require water to survive. Through reducing the pond’s water line, and making sure those plants do not get all the things that they require, you will find they expire rather quickly, that is unless they’ve already broadcast their seed, in which case you will have to do it again the following year. If you’ve no problem with lowering and raising the water level in the pond every year, then that will be a viable option for you.
Pesticides – A last resort, since pesticides may hurt the organic life within your pond, which sort of defeats the purpose of owning a pond. Regardless, you can still purchase any herbicides which you require from both stores, or from online. Just remember the hazards.
Keep another thing in mind, you might believe cattails are a serious problem and you have to destroy all of them, however take note that cattails help stop erosion, and that is a very good thing. Therefore remember to leave at the very least a couple cattails standing, since all plants and animals (wasps not included) has a purpose, even if that purpose is as yet unknown.
