Tips for Garden Pond Maintenance in the Winter

A few years ago my husband surprised me by making me a garden pond for my birthday. After being away from home for a week, I was shocked to see the hard work and time that my husband spent on surprising me with this garden pond. I truly love it. He had some help at the store selecting the plants that grow just right in the garden pond. He left the fish selecting up to me. I just love gold fish and that is what I selected. The actual garden pond maintenance is fairly easy. As Mother Nature started to send cooler weather our way I just knew winter would be here before too long. I had read many articles and books but I was a little worried about my fish. I had learned a lot about garden pond maintenance and felt pretty confident that my fish would survive. They did survive and have been for three years now.

When fall arrived I started my garden pond maintenance by removing and disposing of all of my annual flowers. I trimmed off all the flowers and leaves from the potted plants and placed them in the deepest part of the pond. I read that this will keep the plants from getting damaged by the freezing temperatures.

Next I removed all debris from the pond such as leaves, plants, insects, solid fish waste and algae. As winter sets in failure to remove such debris will cause toxic gases to build up in your garden pond. These gases will be trapped when the pond freezes over. We also placed a tight fitting net over the top of the pond to keep falling leaves and other unwanted debris out of the pond. By placing this on top of the pond it also makes opening the pond up in the spring a lot less messy.

Before placing the netting we remove and clean the pump and filter. The pump and filter is put away until spring. We drain about half the water from the pond and clean as good as we can. We than refill it and place an old air pump and diffuser stone from an aquarium. This air pump allows oxygen to be pumped into the pond to allow your fish to have fresh oxygen and keeps the toxic gases away.

As the colder weather sets in the fish will become less active. As the fish becomes less active they will need less food. Soon the fish will stop coming up to the top of the water which means they do not need feed at all. This fish will swim and stay to the deepest part of your pond for the duration of winter. I will quit feeding my fish altogether when the temperature drops below 42 degrees.

I followed all these garden pond maintenance steps when closing our pond up for the winter months. By doing so the pond was easier to open up and maintain for the spring and summer months. My fish had less stress and came back up to the surface as vibrant as they were the year before.

Good luck with your winter garden pond maintenance!