Harvesting azolla

[David Hare-Scott]

My dam has red azolla (azolla filiculoides) which is a native floating
aquatic fern. I would like to harvest it to use it as a mulch and to add to
compost. I imagine there are several tons of the stuff. The question is how
to gather it. A net scoop would work around the edges but this sounds
rather energetic to me, one could end up with a bad case of gorilla arms and
get very wet. Other ideas are to use a net on floats and pull the net
across the dam or to pump it through a mesh of some kind and allow the water
to run back into the dam.

Google tells me that azolla is used in the way I want to but so far nothing
about how to gather it.

Before I re-invent the wheel has anybody tried this or heard of it being
done? By what method?

David

[dr-...@wi.rr.com]

yes. a good friend has an aquatic plant business and has both duckweed and azolla
that had overwhelmed her plants and kept the water too cool in her greenhouses. She
puts a pump into a container and then sits the container so that the front edge is
just below the surface and as the water and floaters get sucked in they stay in the
container and she cleans it out when needed. surprisingly it creates a kind of slow
river in the 44' x 11' wide ponds in the greenhouse so eventually most of the "stuff"
gets pulled in.

Ingrid

[David Hare-Scott]

Thanks

D