So the pond gleying process is done, at least for the time being. I may have to fine tune some things, but the pond seems to be retaining water quite well! We had rain a couple of weeks ago, and I used this significant puddle to moisten the walls of the pond every 2 or 3 days, and I pounded and massaged this rudimentary adobe to pack it down and smooth any cracks.
A pitchfork came in handy for slinging heavy, sticky, clayey mud, something I only realized half-way through the job. Like a dummy I was using shovels and banging off as much of the muck as I could each time. Very inefficient! A strong pitchfork is the right tool for this job: everything just slides right off the tines... I also made a portion of the pond by literally slinging mud: taking fistfuls of wet clay, molding into large balls, aiming, and flinging where I though reinforcement was due. Then I would tromp that splattered projectile in, either with my foot or my hand or the tamper.
I danced on the bottom and the sides of pond, pretty much any day I was at the site, 3 or 4 times a week, for say....3 1/2 weeks, approximately, during which I added each subsequent layer, tamping it down. I also used a tamper, which is a hardwood handle with a square metal plate at the base, which you lift and drop down onto the soil to compact it. I'm not sure if such a tool is really necessary. Throwing your weight around in a tromping dance seems to be the most effective way of tightening that seal, not to mention the most fun. After I put down the landscape cloth I also took out a rubber hammer and banged the cloth into the sides of the pond as best I could, to stabilize it.
Summarizing: the layers of the gley consisted of:
1.) dug out and well tamped native clay-soil bottom, with significant amounts of sodium bentonite, which expands when wet.
2.) random cuttings from garden: bamboo leaves, fresh and dried, the large leaves of some kind of tree tobacco that I have growing here, is weakly invasive and the hummingbirds love, and whatever other plants I thought could be sacrificed for the occasion, if they were broadleafed enough or plentiful enough to make a significant contribution. Tamp tamp tamp!
3.) Horse manure, mixed with hay, sawdust, wood shavings and the odd eucalyptus leaf. Tamp tamp tamp!
4.) Maori Flax (Phormium tenax) leaves, of which I had access to many, are broad and sword like. I layered them the tips pointing at the bottom, radiating around the pond, threw some more on top of that, then loosely weaved with more flax in the other direction, to give the whole thing more integrity and stability when I would throw more stuff on top. Tamp tamp tamp!
5.) More horsemanure, with lots of sawdust to fill in cracks. Tamp tamp tamp!
6.) Spent hay, to cover all of the horsemanure. Tamp tamp tamp!
7.) A primitive adobe fashioned from the native soil, subsoil, clay , some hay and a bit of sodium bentonite left over from 'Plan A'. This I tamped and danced on more than anything else, which isn't true of course, because all the previous layers were also being tamped and danced on in the process.
8.) Burlap, which I just rolled out in three strips the length of the pond. I held it down at points at the top with stones and little stakes made from hemp sticks, and put a few stones along the bottom to hold down that part of it, which I assume might float up and be rendered useless. Perhaps the burlap is useless, I don't know. I added it because I already possessed it and thought that it would inhibit erosion of the sides when the rain comes falling down on them. Seems likely to help, at least a little. Once the pond is full, the burlap may help lifeforms take hold, which otherwise might have been washed away. Tamp tamp tamp!
I just did a bit of dancing on the pond-sides this morning. It's lovely to have a nascent pond. The birds certainly seem to be happy that water has returned to their digs....
That's it for now, I'm going back to the verdant and gleaming-wet garden.
A+
I mistakenly state in this video that I put more horseshit with sawdust after the hay. I got it backwards. The hay layer separates the final horse manure layer and the 'adobe' layer.
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