|
Texas Lake Solutions
Dedicated to Preserving Texas Lakes
|
Water Is Life In Texas, Our Lakes Provide That Water!
Lake Weed Control: Lake Weed Cutters, Lake Mowing?
Sometimes you here things that strike you as odd. Words in combinations you never expected to hear, like the routine that George Carlin had about combinations like "government intelligence," or Steve Martins lines about phrases you never hear like "Hand me that piano." Sometimes you hear similar things in the real world. One that strikes me as strange is "lake mowing," just like lawn mowing, but with an aquatic twist. It is true, this phrase has
|
now become a part of our vocabulary in vegetation management. How did this come about?
The root of the problem (please pardon the pun) is found in the nature of the aquatic vegetation now existing in our ponds and lakes. We now play host to a variety of weeds which were not abundant 30 years ago. These are exotic plants which have few, if any, natural predators, and control methods are limited to biological, chemical, and mechanical. Biological controls are few, many people don't like chemicals, and mechanical controls, that is mowing and harvesting is about all that's left.
We can expect more of the same in the future, and the growth of exotics is often exponential! It appears that tending a lake, will be as important, if not more important than tending a lawn, so lawn tending methods are sometimes being employed. This problem is not going away on it's own, so we need to learn to deal with it, and the quicker, the better! So, what are our options?
|
Prevention
For aquatic weed management, the first choice is Prevention. Cleaning everything inside and outside of your boat when moving between lakes, even the boat trailer and your fishing or skiing gear, is the most obvious, and most needed prevention tactic. Our first line of defense is alert boaters and fishermen.
Chemical
If prevention fails to produce a weed free body of water, the next best option, in my opinion is chemical treatments. This is one of the Services we offer. There are some good products on the market for this these days. They are applied in very low quantities, and degrade quickly.
Biological
Somewhere in the mix, biological controls come into play. I like the idea of biological controls, as long as they are naturally occurring organisms. Enhancing naturally occurring organisms is a fine idea, but I am a little wary of using non natives to control non natives. There are too many things that can go wrong, and you now have two alien predators in the environment. No matter how well researched the organism is, changing conditions can, and do alter situations.
What if you have not been able to prevent, or control exotic aquatic vegetation with chemical or biological control methods? Well, there are mechanical controls.
Mechanical
Mechanical lake weed controls should be used when other options have failed, and the pond or lake owner has determined that the mechanical controls will be a permanent part of the maintenance regimen.
Prevention is long past, chemical controls have failed to produce the desired results, and the use of a lake weed cutter is now a part of your lake maintenance.
Mechanical cutter considerations
With this in mind, what type of lake weed cutter is best suited to this type of job? In order to use mechanical controls as a part of a lake IPM program, I think that there are several considerations, the primary one being fragmentation.
Fragmentation
Shredding the weeds to bits, will only worsen the situation. Most lake weeds readily reproduce from fragments, some at 50% or better! The lake weed cutter should vibrate as little as possible. The weeds should be cut smoothly, as possible. The mowing device should produce as little turbulence as possible. In other words, the less disturbance, the better. The weeds don't need to be vibrated, shaken, or stirred. They do not need to be dragged, ripped, or torn, they need to be cut!
© Copyright 2008 Texas Lake Solutions | | |
