Having a new pond dug

Anybody have any suggestion on what would be good to plant for ducks

I'd say for the easiest thing you can do is transplant barn grass. Get it growing good and flood it before the season.

would you rather have plants that come back and grow on their own with a little help each year, or will you be planting every year? what kind of water depths will you have?

Smartweed

Gonna be pretty shallow maybe 4 or 5 feet

Are you going to be able to pump water in?

You might look in to japanese millet also.

duckweed can get you some birds in but has to protected from the wind and no subsurface vegetation will grow if it clouds the whole surface of the pond over. Also if the pond overflows you will lose all of your food

if you are going to have that kind of depth, I would go with some type of SAV. maybe get Pennsylvania smartweed and/or barnyard around the shallower edges, or dig a sizeable flat on the side opposite the dam for moist soil or planting each spring summer. in the depths, id try to get wigeon grass or southern naiad growing. as said above, duckweed is great if you can get it growing, but can also ruin a pond if youre trying to grow fish also. gadwalls and wigeons love it, but it will also wash out during big rain events.

No

I got it in my other pond

I second on the Smartweed. The seeds have a lot of nutritional value and once you get it going it's perennial. Can not even begin to tell you how many gizzards I've found it in.

Yes I plan planting it and several other stuff

does smartweed interfere with fish habitat?

I don't think so

It's actually beneficial. Smartweed is a waters edge plant with hollow stalks. It will grow out a couple feet over the surface and create shade habitat for fish. Bass love it. Also worth having is any type of nutsedge. It's seeds are very high in fat content and will grow damn near anywhere

that sounds like a winner, not trying to hijack the thread, but algae growth has been hard to control in the shallows so having something along the edges that will use up those nutrients and keep out the algae bloom is a double win. When do you plant smartweed?

you don't want the small white flower headed smartweed that is perennial. you want the annual that has a much larger pinkish color head. it is an annual plant and will grow flooded, but will need some kind of water level drop to get going again each spring.

Smartweed