Barley Straw Extract
Inhibit the growth of algae in your pond with the use of barley straw extract.
Advantages
❊ 100% natural solution
❊ Harmless to fish and wildlife
❊ No mess or unsightly rotting debris
❊ It’s easy to use and more efficient than straw
❊ Effective in both large and small water bodies
❊ Contains no synthetic chemicals or artificial pesticides
❊ Produced by us in-house for complete quality assurance
❊ Totally eliminates the high cost of transporting barley straw
Dosage guidelines
Our barley straw extract is called BioX and it comes in 25L drums as pictured.
It should be applied initially at a dose rate of 4‐5 litres per acre before dilution.
To create the volume required, the concentrate should be added to the water body by mixing at least one part concentrate to five parts water.
Further weekly treatment should then be carried out at 1 litre per acre dosage, diluting the product for ease of application across the water surface.
Ideally, the dilute concentrate should be applied from a boat preferably by spraying out through a knapsack sprayer which should be kept clean of any other chemicals. Alternatively, it can be drizzled gradually into a running inlet which will then naturally distribute it with the flows and currents.
Lake Aid BioX is available in handy 25-litre application drums.
Give us a call to discuss if BioX Barley Straw Extract is the right solution for your requirements.
We sell barley straw extract in 25L drums
Why is barley straw used in ponds?
Algae thrive in water that contains too many nutrients. Therefore to limit the growth of algae, a pond needs an ecological balance. Barley straw extract brings with it beneficial bacteria, which when introduced to the surface of the water (where there is plenty of oxygen) immediately begin to compete with the algae for the available nutrients.
This is especially so if the water temperature is above 20°C (therefore application in early summer is recommended). Barley straw also produces a small proportion of hydrogen peroxide – a natural algicide that acts as an inhibiting chemical affecting the growth and reproduction of algal cells. Barley straw also contains the natural plant-based substance known as lignin.
How do you apply barley straw?
It’s not a case of simply buying a bale and dropping it in your pond. Regardless of the size of the water body, the straw should be packaged loosely into nets – known as ‘straw sausages’. Christmas tree netting is ideal for large applications.
Loosely packed as opposed to densely compressed (as it would be if left in a bale), allows highly oxygenated water to pass through the strands. Mooring the sausages at one end allows for a greater degree of movement within the water, whilst remaining buoyant.
Straw is expected to remain active for around three months, after which spent sausages should be removed from the water body to prevent deoxygenation and nutrient increase. Mind your back too – straw sausages used on ponds and lakes of any significant size will be much heavier when waterlogged.
Save your back and use barley straw extract
Through stringent in-house research and development, we have been able to produce the inhibiting chemical produced by barley straw, effectively distilling the process and negating the need for cumbersome applications of straw.
The barley straw used to produce our Lake Aid BioX is free from herbicides and pesticides and is the produce of land managed in accordance with the Organic Products Regulations 2009.
Although not fully understood, the application of barley straw in ponds is a tried and tested method of algae control. Effective in water bodies of all sizes, barley straw does not kill nor remove existing algae, but rather is a preventative measure for inhibiting the growth of algae in the first place.
Despite being an environmentally acceptable biological control that helps to withstand the advance of filamentous and blue-green algae, barley straw application, like any suppressant introduced into the ecology of a pond, should be treated with caution. The eradication of any aspect of the food web (in this case algae) will always have ecological implications, therefore measures of control should be proportional to the issue.