Our Future Needs Reeds Reedbed's are natures sewage and purification system,
REED BED MAINTENANCE IS REWARDING.
Reed bed maintenance is as valuable as sampling the effluent discharge to meet EA consent levels. Without maintenance many reed beds fail and need to be refurbished or replaced at great expense. Maintenance should be appropriate to the design purpose of the reed bed and should not be onerous, just simple straight forward common sense, taking account of the seasonal variations that influence plant growth.
The infrastructure maintenance, pipes, valves, manholes, chambers and the filter media, is not the same as flora control. The control of the growing areas of a system takes the pressure off the infrastructure, which can be the costly part of any planned maintenance scheme necessary to keep any system functioning correctly. Think of a reed bed as a beautiful lawn, it will need cutting from time to time.
Late winter is a good time for maintenance to improve the efficiency of any reed
bed treatment system, because the old growth can easily be seen and removed to enable
new growth to spring forward.The new growth encourages new colonies eg: micro-
The pods need their tops to be cut down before they split and spread seed, because
they will very quickly crowd out the surface area of their pond which excludes UV
from the polishing micro-
Settlement ponds are a very important aspect of any reed bed treatment process, and require just as much attention as the reed bed itself. This picture to the right clearly shows healthy bulrushes in pod mode which looks very attractive, but left unchecked can cause damage to the whole treatment process.
Reed bed maintenance is required on all reed beds to a greater or lesser extent, and the claims that reed beds are "maintenance free" are correct in context with a sewage treatment system, but not otherwise, because they are a growing entity. Everything that grows needs some control to enable the optimum benefits to be realised. The Environment Agency do prefer maintenance schedules to be drawn up for all installations, and the reed bed shown in this picture was no exception. The maintenance here was based upon weed and grass control, which left unchecked would swamp the typha and inhibit their effectiveness to a measurable degree. The maintenance was simple once or twice a year grass and weed cutting and removing, and the bed never failed sample tests.
