Tag Archives: garden pond

11/18/14

Attracting Newts to Your Pond

Encouraging newts to your garden pond will add life and color that can be seen for much of the year. You should never remove them from the wild but there are a few steps you can take to invite them to take up residence in your pond.

Newts not only add life to the pond, they also eat algae. So they provide a natural solution to a common problem. As they are most active during the warmer months of the year, when algae is rifer, they can be a real help. Of course other natural remedies such as Barley Straw will help too.

The best way to invite newts into your garden is to create the ideal habitat. A natural pond without fish is the best environment, as they will eat newt eggs and spawn.

baby newt

Build a loose rockery around or near the pond. This will provide them with shelter to live and breed. The cool, damp, atmosphere is ideal for newts, and will encourage slugs and insects, a good food source. If you want to feed the newts, then you can add bloodworm, daphnia or brine shrimp to the water, a good retailer will have a wide range of pond foods.

Adding plants such as water mint or water forget-me-nots are small but have wide leaves which are perfect for newts to lay and hide their eggs in. Reed plants are also great to promote natural behaviors. The eggs have a jelly like texture, which newts wrap up in leaves to protect them.

Newts are most active from March/April, and you should see babies appear from June to August. From then on, you will notice that they start to disappear, as they mostly hibernate throughout the winter, until around February. During this time, try not to rearrange the rockery or do too much work around the area, as this will disturb the newts.

Children will no doubt be very interested in the new addition to your pond, and it’s a great way to promote a love of nature. However always supervise your children around these slippery creatures, and ensure that if they do pick a newt up, that they do so very gently and with wet hands. Don’t allow the newts to be taken away from the area, or held for more than a few minutes.

You may find that not only newts arrive, but that frogs and toads appear too. As they thrive in similar environments. They can live well together and create a beautifully natural area of wildlife in your garden.

Newt in garden

Don’t worry if newts don’t start to arrive, despite the lovely home you have created. It may take time for them to appear and breed. If your local environment has changed, such as new roads, building sites etc., this may affect the migration of newts too. Leaving the pond and its inhabitants to its own devices will encourage the most natural behaviors and results.

08/10/14

Frog-Friendly Gardens

For most people making your garden a friendly area for frogs seems like a strange idea, but what we often don’t have is understanding. These often misunderstood amphibians are one of the nicest critters you can attract to your garden. In many ways frogs can be amazing survivors, however changing habitats over the years have caused them great distress and they are disappearing at an alarming rate [1]. You should keep in mind that introducing non-native frogs to the local ecosystem is a pretty bad idea, sometimes even forbidden by laws and for a good reason [2]. You can, however do your best to attract the local frogs to your garden, as they will be quite useful and great companions.

Frog pond by Eagle lake in Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Photo by JR Libby.

Frog pond by Eagle lake in Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Photo by JR Libby.

  • You would do well to avoid simply introducing the frogs into your Bayswater garden, instead you should do your best to invite them by creating the right conditions for that.
  • If you happen to have kids living with you, then they can learn to interact with the frogs. There is nothing to fear from most common variety frogs, so they can even be caught and picked up, just remember to treat them with respect and care.
  • You can make a useful garden pond to allow amphibians to live there, but that means your pond will need to have shallow edges that taper off into surrounding moist vegetation, such as nice and leafy mulch. Frogs will need shelter from summer heat, though they tend to enjoy moving around most after moist and rainy weather. Overhanging trees are welcome, as long as they don’t completely cover the pond in shade, as the frogs will still need sunlight. You need to use a good mix of native pond plants, such as marsh marigolds, water violets and the like if you want to have good vegetation around and in your pond. Check a garden center for more information and the type of plants in your area you can use. Your pond should be about 2-3 feet in depth for optimal conditions.
  • Another thing worth mentioning is that frogs will keep most insects away from your garden, since they dine on moths, mosquitoes, slugs, snails, flies, cockroaches, beetles and more. If you have a good combination of plants and shrubs native to the area as well as mulching your garden beds and keeping a good compost heap, then you will have a garden much more welcoming for amphibian guests.
  • Having a good garden pond will also improve the conditions where they can breed in peace, but it mostly depends on how much peace they get while living there. Shade and good plant life will create exactly what they need for living there.
  • There are some things to watch out for, which can be hazardous to frogs. If you do have frogs in your garden, you should pay special attention at all times when you’re using a string trimmer or mowing, or else you may hurt or even kill them. You must use a nylon mesh to keep your garden plants protected and that its size is good enough, such as at least 2 inches, as this will keep them away.

Sources:

1. Why are Frogs Disappearing?
2. Why Are Coqui Frogs a Problem in Hawai’i?

 

Ella Andrews, bloggerGuest post by Ella Andrews, who is a writer and blogger with great flair for gardening and landscaping. She is focused on writing the best possible way and is always searching for new inspiration sources. Her present article offers non traditional methods for garden care.