Making a garden more frog friendly.

Archeron

Hi all,
Over the past few years, I've spotted a few frogs around my garden, and every year, there is spawn in one of the two ponds. Last year, we seen a huge frog a number of times in the pond with the spawn, and for the first time this year, we've started spotting another frog (not the same one as year before, much smaller and strangely colored) in the other pond a good 25 feet away from the first one, but that has no spawn.

I love to see these little creatures in the garden, as I'm a big fan of frogs. I was wondering if anyone has any do's or donts to try and make the garden more hospitable to them? I started clearing lots of weeds out of the second pond, which is how I spotted him as I think I disturbed it when I was reefing them out. As a result, I stopped pulling them out in case I was wrecking his environment.

Any top tips on making a frog friendly environment? Is it unusual to find frogs living in garden ponds?
Cheers!

kildare.17hmr

My father has a big pond too and got a load of spawn from an uncle a few years ago and had frogs every year since, i think once they have access to the water and some longer grass or something t hide in they are grand, my young lad will spend hours in the garden playin with them

BargainHunter

Archeron wrote: »

Any top tips on making a frog friendly environment? Is it unusual to find frogs living in garden ponds?
Cheers!

Frogs love long grass and scrub, which allows them to hide from predators and retains moisture longer. So letting your entire garden get overgrown would be a great for the frogs. Although this overgrown grass and scrub also looks very unsightly. Some people say my house looks abandoned because of the overgrown garden. But thats the price you pay for a wildlife garden.

Frogs also like log piles, so putting a few rotting logs with cavities underneath will provide habitat for them to hibernate in. Again, this can look unsightly in a suburban garden.

Regarding the pond, I would only clear the pond once a year in autumn. I remove 60% of floating plants like blanketweed and duckweed. But dont remove them all. Do this in Sep/Oct/Nov before the plants die and decay. Also remove fallen leaves from overhanging trees. But I leave the pond bottom undisturbed. Disturbing the silt makes the water cloudy and enriches the water with nutrients causing algal growth. Water clarity is a sign of water quality. Green water is over enriched and toxic.

Finally, never use herbicide weedkillers like Roundup in your garden as it is toxic to frogs. The herbicides that Ive seen explicity state this on the bottle. If you want to clear your driveway of weeds you can use a mixture of vinegar, salt and washing up liquid. Or you can pull them up with your hands and get some excercise at the same time.

Traonach

Put in a garden setup like this and you will get plenty of frogs.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=70451157

Archeron

Nice one everyone, thanks for the tips. Especially the note on the weedkiller. I was going to use this to clear out the area of some unwanted greenery, but will avoid it now.

Must invest in some logs too. Appreciate the comments!