WEED REPORT

June, 2006

The Hamilton Lake Association has a message for ALL PAYING MEMBERS of the Lake Association. The ENTIRE lake has been treated with a chemical called SONAR. This treatment is not the same type of treatment that most of you are familiar with. This type of chemical is “NOT” applied the same way as the old 2-4-D herbicide used in the past! It is not applied to just the shoreline area of the lake!

The vast majority of this treatment is applied to the large Eurasian watermilfoil beds and also follows the hydraulic water flow of the lake. This keeps the chemical in the lake longer and does a much better over all aquatic plant treatment. Most of the shoreline is not treated. The way this treatment works has to do with the natural water flow of the lake and again, this is not a shoreline treatment. The applicator’s airboat will not be in front of your house as in years past. You still will have the full effect of the chemical at your dock.

This program takes about 4 weeks to work. The best way you can help this program work is to stay away from any and all weeds. Every time you cut the milfoil weeds up with your propeller the weed drops and re-seeds itself making the weed problem worse.

The reason the weeds are so bad this spring is because we had very little ice cover on the lake this past winter. We only had about two weeks of ice cover this past winter, normally we have about three months of ice cover. Also we had a full nine days of rain in the first part of May this let a lot of nutrients into the lake and also set the application back about two weeks on the SONAR treatment program. Please be patient the weeds will drop.
 

More information:

The single most important thing every homeowner can do to help control weeds in the lake is to use a phosphorus-free fertilizer. When shopping for lawn fertilizer, look for the three numbers on the lawn fertilizer bag. The middle number indicates the phosphorus content of the fertilizer, so look for a 0 as the middle number (example 20-0-20). If you don't see the product, ask the manager to order it for you. The Indiana Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts has more information on this subject.