Fred Miller

Forget the hateful things I wrote about pond muck. Pond muck is my new best friend in the garden.

“Pond muck is an excellent, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer packed with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, suitable for gardens, trees, and composting,” according to Google’s AI assistant.

It seems fair to say pond muck does for plants what artificial intelligence does for an internet search engine.

Its slow-release characteristics mean it can be safely applied directly to a garden or at the base of a tree without the worry of “burning” that may come with fresh manure. Lime or wood ashes may be applied to counteract acidity.

I love it. I have an unlimited supply. My problem is getting the muck out of the pond.

Our pond started all this by draining itself in late February. Grandson Bob went down to skate, only to find the pond a giant ice bowl, the ice the boys had been skating on the day before now laying on the banks and bottom. The extraordinarily thick ice somehow contrived to break open a pipe installed for intentional draining in 1992, the last time we cleaned out the muck.

Accumulated muck, we are told, is bad for the fish and other creatures. It locks up nutrients, depletes oxygen, encourages algae growth, and, I might add from personal experience, makes one stink after swimming.

There’s still a small pool in the very bottom of the pond (miraculously with fish in it, which the great blue herons find a wonderful convenience). Everywhere the muck is a foot or better in depth: classic black Jello slimy stuff in the bottom, where it waits to entrap unwary humans, but exposed and slowly drying farther up the banks, where it can be walked upon and dug up.

If I can just get it all out, I won’t have to buy fertilizer for the rest of my life. I could probably sell it: “Millers’ Pond Muck: Muck Up Your Garden with the Best.”

I was understandably reluctant to try scooping it out with the tractor’s front loader; my vivid imagination showed me on the tractor sliding inexorably into the bottom. As a halfway measure, which I thought could be safely done, I nosed the tractor down the shallowest slope of the bank and dropped the bucket to the ground at what had been the water’s edge. That made it close enough to the drier muck of the upper bank that I could fill it by hand, one shovelful at a time.

Hand shoveling is grunt labor at its finest, but, sad to say, I am mentally and physically well-suited for such work. Three sessions later, seven tractor buckets of muck have been hand-dug, hauled, spread on my garden and tilled in.

The excavation has left a hole in the muck about the size of a king mattress; hardly a fingernail’s worth of the supply.

When it gets warmer, I will implement the next phase of my plan: using a two-inch trash pump to suck out the muck.

In contrast to the shoveling effort, this stage of operations moves from the dry muck of the high bank to the most easily dissolved muck at the watery edge of the pool. At the business end of the suction hose I will stand bravely at water’s edge and use a wand-like section of pipe with a steel trap filter screwed to its end, swishing it around to take up the mucky slurry which hopefully the pump will have enough guts to transport through a fire hose and onto our pumpkin fields. I will require assistance in this adventure from The Favorite, Lamppost Head, and The 747, the three grandsons who have a pecuniary interest vested in the success of our fall pumpkin patch business.

Should any of my loyal readers wish to share at no cost in the bounty of our pond muck, I invite you to contact me through The Review or otherwise. Bring buckets and a shovel, and take home as “muck” as you like.