Low-Cost Water Feature for your Garden & Orchard
Having open accessible water in your garden is one of the most impactful things you can do to boost your garden and orchard ecosystem by providing habitat for beneficial birds, insects, and pollinators, and there are even some delicious vegetables you can grow in standing water.
There are a lot of ways to have water in your garden but our favorite is to have a relatively shallow but wide container. Something like a kiddie pool is great, because you can also grow water chestnuts in them. See our blog post if you want to know how to grow water chestnuts in St. Louis.
Water is essential for not just plant life but also animal life. If you have accessible water then all the pollinators you want to pollinate your vegetable and fruit crops have water. All the predatory insects that eat the pests in your garden and orchard have water. All of the birds eating pests have water. If these organisms have water then they will hang around your garden or orchard more, meaning they will be there when you need them and can respond to the needs of the fruit and vegetable crops more quickly.
Having a large container, like a kiddie pool with water chestnuts, is also a great way to have dragonflies in your area, which are voracious predators of mosquitoes and other pest insects. We have also regularly gotten tadpoles in the kiddie pools showing that frogs enjoy the ponds, another animal that can eat pest insects in the garden.
It is also known that birds will peck at fruit and squirrels sometimes bite into tomatoes in the summer because they need water. So if there is water available they are less likely to damage your fruits and vegetables to get water.
Every time I propose this to someone one of the first questions is what about mosquitos. We have all been taught that any standing water will be full of mosquitos. You should absolutely be aware that mosquitoes could multiply in something like a kiddie pool and you should keep an eye out for this. However, I will say when I have one that is planted with water chestnuts and has tadpoles in it and dragonflies flying around I don’t see mosquito larvae in the pond. Sometimes early in the season, I see some and there is a very easy solution. They make special BT dunks or BT granules that are specifically made to add to ponds that kill just mosquito larvae and are nontoxic to other organisms. These work wonderfully and are inexpensive.
The first time I added a shallow tub to my garden I did it specifically to grow water chestnuts and I now do this every year. I of course love eating the water chestnuts but I think what I love more is seeing my daughter get excited to see the tadpoles each spring. I love hearing the dragonflies buzz around my head as I work out in the garden. I love walking in the garden and seeing a bird taking a bath with the water chestnuts. I love all of the pest management this little pond can do for me and I love that this can all be done with just a container to hold water and a little soil.