soil pots and plant the pond with edibles

We have dug several small ponds, too small for holding fish. One is the overflow of the water tank so it wonÄt have water all the time, one is where it puddles naturally one in the chicken duck run connected to a very small roof, and one is the downpipe of the neighbours roof - actuallly none of them will have water all the time.
We want to seal them with bentonite and plant them with edible species, only the duck pond we want to plant with something the ducks don't eat.
Some do tell you to plant the plants in pots. Otherwise do I put good soil only were the plants are? Or do I put the soil over the whole pond surface? Or do I dig a hole through the bentonite and put good soil there and will the pond leek then? How did you plant your pond?

Paula Edwards wrote:
....We want to seal them with bentonite and plant them with edible species, only the duck pond we want to plant with something the ducks don't eat.
Some do tell you to plant the plants in pots. Otherwise do I put good soil only were the plants are? Or do I put the soil over the whole pond surface? Or do I dig a hole through the bentonite and put good soil there and will the pond leek then? How did you plant your pond?

Planting in pots is for decorative ponds that will be cleaned with filters,etc. The point is to keep the pond "clean" and "pretty", and to prevent spread of vigorous plants, but it discourages normal pond biological processes.

I have two small ponds that are filled from rain/roof run off, they have plastic liners, but I purposely covered the liners with soil
to encourage flora/fauna.

The purpose of bentonite is to seal the pond bottom, so putting holes in it will cause leaks.

My ponds have typical water plants (purple loose strife, water hyacinths, algae, etc) and goldfish.

i'm not sure where you live, but if you're in the south you might be able to grow some cannas and taro pretty well in a small or shallow water spot that sometimes dries out. actually if you're in the north you can probably still do it if you pull up and harvest at the end of the warm season before the first freeze - chopping all the leaves off and just overwintering the roots. taro can grow really good in stagnant mud water, just check out youtube on how they grow it in hawaii. the cannas would be better for the edges of the pond that's wettish dry, and they can handle dry pretty good too. marjorie wildcraft has a great description of cannas in her survival gardening in the south video.
maybe even cavendish bananas in big pots and winter protection. so many options!
ducks won't eat taro. nothing will until it's cooked.
hope that helps or at least inspires.

ten
oldescrubland.blogspot.com

Taro might be borderline here. I am sure it will grow but not sure to get a harvest. It gets down to -°5C (5 below frost), but summer are no constantly hot because we're on altitude.