Apples and Algae

This past year was a great one for gardens in that the weather conditions were wonderful for growing vegetables, fruit, and mushrooms.  I've never seen as any apples and mushrooms.  Here's a nearby apple tree laden with fruit in the fall.

Good growing conditions for plants include sunlight and moisture.  Lots of rain fell this past spring and summer.  We had a huge storm around Memorial Day that caused a small landslide onto Route 4.  A few other storms were almost as severe.  If we were in Virginia, these storms would be called "gully-washers".  Unfortunately heavy rainfall causes erosion, which contributes to phosphorus loading in our pond.  The same weather conditions that gave us a great vegetable year, fed the alga in Quimby Pond.  The gleotrichia alga from last year was replaced by another species of blue green alga.  We are not doing anything wrong, in fact most of us on the pond have made great efforts at lessening runoff into the pond.  This past summer, the Quimby Pond water clarity was less than 2009.  Our cloudiest water had a Secchi disk reading of 1.05 meters.  That's lower than it has been for years, but the clarity hasn't been as low as the readings in 1983 and 1984.

The image above is a Secchi disk in Quimby Pond.  Water clarity in our pond is measured (in this way) every 2 weeks.  A Secchi disk is lowered into the water column and the depth at which the Secchi disk disappears is recorded.  A scope is used to prevent glare from affecting your vision.  It appears that this Secchi disk is suspended by a rope, but actually it's a plastic measuring tape, which makes it easy to determine the depth of the disk.

I welcome 2012 in hopes that we are a little luckier and mother nature is a little kinder in limiting those "gully-washing storms".  Here's hoping our pond water improves this year.

Happy New Year.

Here's another of Gayla's images from the past summer.