High water table - instant pond?

For most of the winter, I can dig down and water pools in the hole just 5 inches or less below the ground surface. During the summer, however, the Houston black clay hardens into rock and forms large cracks. Is this situation a good candidate for a medium-sized pond? We don't have any pigs, but the soil is almost all clay (or at least our crawdads and fire ants think so- they dig it up from underground most of the year and deposit wet little clay balls on the surface.)  Would this much clay be self-gleying once I dig it out?

The best way to find out is to dig a snall test "pond" in the area where you would want a real pond.  watch it for a few months, see what happens.

That's a great idea- especially since we're going from wet spring to dry summer in my area.  Thanks!  

That is something I have wondered about here in New Orleans.  Before starting my own thing I worked for a permaculturist's water management landscaping company for a while.  I noticed something interesting on a job where we dug a huge pond.  After digging we called it a day.  The next day it had a few feet of water from the water table.  We had to pump that out because we were putting in a pond liner so we could fill up a lot more than those bottom 2 feet or so.  But it was pretty amazing to think that you could have a pond slowly fill up with water without a drop of rain!

Keep in mind that the water table may rise and fall with the seasons and precipitation.  Keep me posted on what works with your test pond, and I may be doing one in the near future here pending some property stuff.

Oh and on a side note - in a Mark Shepard webinar I heard that many trees will not put roots down into the water table.  I think he said either loblolly or slash pine were one of the few.  Anyone know anything about this?

Following.  My land is reputed to have a high water table (more like 2-3' than 5", but still)... I'll be excited to hear any updates!

My property is on very sandy soil, and I've learned historically from neighbors there used to be a creek and a retention pond at the top of the hill that no longer exist thanks to development.

Our water table fluctuates seasonally, in the winter it's about 2 feet down and in the summer much more with our seasonal droughts. We have an unlined pond that was here when we bought the house. It's steep sided and closer to the house than I think is best but the house stays dry and I've been working in the summers when the pond goes dry rearranging the rocks and pond margins to be more naturalistic for plants and wildlife. The steep sides do help during rain events, right now for example the water level is up 6" or so from two days ago and when the rain settles the rain water will go with the water table and appear to be back to normal. It definitely works and plays a major role in keeping our property from flooding.

If you want the pond I say try excavating it. It will at least give the water somewhere to go. I view and treat it as 1 massive rain garden with the pond being zone 1.

If you can find an experienced, local dozer operator, he’ll be able to tell you all about it.  The one I hired said he’d hit bedrock at six feet. He was right.

It seems like with such a shallow water table and clay soils, it should work great.

You might look into the quality of the ground water too. It could be too alkaline. Your state extension office can tell you that.

In MO the state conservation department will stock it for free if you build  it the way they want it.

i'm interested in this topic too as my land is germane to it.

this thread has really inspired me and is one of my favorites on permies. do you have, or want, pigs?

https://permies.com/t/38201/Progress-Gleying-Pond-Pigs

We did just this, we live in an old lake with sand/silt soil and a watertable (in the area we dug our duck pond) that varies from around 1ft down to ground level over the year, we dug it in August and it filled to within a foot from the top after around 4 days, it's stayed filled ever since, if you have a high water table it most certainly works, we're doing drainage work on the field next to it at the moment, will be interesting to see what affect that has.