What to Plant for Wild Ducks

If you are interested in having wild ducks spend more time around your home, there are certain types of plants that you can grow that will help encourage them to stay. By planting this type of greenery, you'll be able to get ducks that normally travel to start spending most of their time around your home.

  1. Plant Types

    • Many of the plants that ducks eat are plants that grow in a pond or lake. These include the duck potato or wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), the arrow arum (Peltandra virginica), wild celery (Vallisneria americana) and the Sago pondweed (Potomogeton pectinatus). All these plants grow either directly in the water or right along the shoreline of the water, and provide an ample food supply for wild ducks. In fact, the Sago pondweed can provide ducks with up to half their dietary needs, and is a great way to encourage them to stay nearby. If you have a river or creek near your pond or lake, you can also try planting wild rice (Zizania aquatica), which requires 6 to 12 inches of moving water in order to grow properly. If you don't have a deep water source, you can still grow plants for wild ducks, such as Japanese millet or smartweed, both of which will grow in mud flats.

    Other Needs

    • In addition to growing plants that are tasty for ducks to eat, you'll also need to ensure that they have an environment conducive to them staying around your home for long periods of time. Ducks prefer to be in water than on land because they feel safer there. So having a large pond or lake will not only make growing food for the ducks easier, but will encourage them to take up at least a semi-permanent residence in the water. If you intend to hunt the ducks, you may want to make sure that there are multiple bodies of water. That's because once the ducks become frightened from one body of water, they simply move to another nearby one. If you intend to just observe the ducks, then a smaller body of water (but one sufficiently large and deep enough to make the ducks feel safe) is all that would be required. The larger the body of water, though, the more plants you can grow to provide food for the ducks.