Cattails are a everyday phenomenon within several North American environments, particularly occurring near bodies of water, and at first seeming fairly harmless. Initially you may see such a plant and think nothing of it. You may even think the same thing the next day, and the day after that, and perhaps many days following that, till that one day that you look outside, and the whole pond has been taken over to the point where you require an air-boat to navigate it like you’re situated in the everglades.

Now that you’ve been overrun by the cunning army of the cattail, what sort of counterattack will you mount? Will you rally the army and run in with guns (or pesticides) firing at will? Or will you opt guerrilla tactics? That is totally up to you, because no matter what technique you choose, the cattails aren’t sentient, so they will not see you coming, meaning that you will always have the element of surprise. That additionally entails that you could likely take off the camouflage and take the paint off of your face.  The binoculars and gas mask likely won’t be required either.

The choices at your disposal are not few in the area of cattail removal, and naturally, since the pond is yours (unless for an unknown purpose you’ve set out to do battle with your next door neighbor’s pond), you are welcome to pick any of these methods:

Physical Removal – You are naturally, free to attempt pulling the cattails yourself. If you do this, try to pull them when they are very young, otherwise they will gain strong root and end up extremely difficult to pull. That would also turn into a all order, since by the time that you get around to eliminating them, odds are they’ve already overrun the pond, and there’ll be a lot of them.

Cutting – You can chop down those cattails, but keeping mind that it’s smart to cut them about one inch under the water line so as to starve them of oxygen and they will die.

Lowering the Water Line – Cattails, just like any other living creature, need water to survive. By lowering the water line, and making sure those plants do not get everything that they need, you will discover they expire rather quickly, that is unless they’ve actually spread seeds, in which case you will have to do it all over again the following year. If you’ve no issue with manipulating the water line of the pond every single year, then this would be a viable option for you.

Pesticides – This should be a last resort, because pesticides may damage the organic life in your pond, which sort of defeats the reason for having a pond. Regardless, you can continue buy any herbicides that you require from both stores, or the Internet. Simply remember the dangers.

Keep another thing in mind, you might believe cattails are a major issue and you have to eradicate each and every of them, however take note that cattails serve to prevent erosion, and that’s definitely a good thing. Therefore leave at the very least a couple cattails alive, since all plants and animals (wasps not included) has a purpose, even though that reason is obscure.

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