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Earlier today I was looking around the garden and just checking plants. I was looking at a Sunflower plant and something jumped out that looked like a rat or mouse. It startled me and I jumped back. But then I caught a glimpse of it before it ran off into the bushes.


Last Spring I caught a bunch of tadpoles and put them in my pond. During the summer almost daily I was seeing little toads sitting up on the water hyacinth. So I would take them and set them loose in my garden.


I never knew if they made it but I hoped they did. After today I am sure the toad I saw was one of the toads I let go. I let them go when they were about the size of your thumbnail now the toad has a mass about the size of my palm. I am pretty happy that it made it and is still around. Just hoping it stays around. I was thinking about putting little containers with water around the garden so it can keep cool when it needs to.

Lucky you! I hear they like slugs among other pests.

We have a resident toad that seems to come back every year -- just how long is their life span anyway? But the thing sets up house in the driveway each time, so it's no help to my garden.

When the Toad took off I can see a spot where it was sorta burrowed into. It was in the moist dirty right by some Sunflowers.

Hey that's interesting. So do you think it just came out of hibernation?

One year, we had a painted box turtle that hibernated in my veg garden. I thought it was really interesting that the spring day it came out of its burrow coincided with when it was perfect or planting seed potatoes.

I find toads usually in wood chips and put the toads in my garden all the time!

Cool PR !! Toad/frogs are an asset to the garden. Hop eit does stay around !!

T

That is a cool story. I think toads are good for the garden because they eat bugs. If I see a toad I leave it along, I'm not sure what it takes to attract toads or make them stay.

We have tiny barking tree frogs in TN. They sound like a childs party horn. It is a little bit funny to be in the garden and get BLASTED by a LOUD horn sound it always scares the heck out of me.

I think all toads and frogs are good for the garden.

Usually if you have a pond it will attract toads and frogs. The pond I have is not your usual pond though. Mine is a mini pond made out of a 55 gallon rubbermaid. And it is elevated so toads can't get in and they also can't get out. Once the tadpoles I got turned to toads I had to get them out so they could be free.


The toads I got are local to the area too. And the thing with toads is they do not need water as much as frogs do. Their skin can dry out a little, but they do need to keep cool and have a shady spot to hide. What I read about these toads is they are nocturnal too, but I don't know if that is true for all toads.

I've stumbled on toads in the garden before, too. It definitely gives you a start!

My biggest surprise, though, came a couple years ago in my garden when I went to check my live trap that I use for my "chipmunk relocation program" and instead of finding a chipmunk found a least weasel in the cage. Cool little predator - and an explanation for why I hadn't been catching very many chipmunks around that time.

That thing was spitting mad & I was almost too scared of it to free it from the trap. I finally put on heavy leather gloves & poised myself to run before letting it go! I was convinced it was going to whirl around and tear into me to get even.

Wow, that's a cool story!

One never knows what critters one will find in the garden!

I caught a racoon like that and they are really bad news!

PunkRotten wrote:Usually if you have a pond it will attract toads and frogs. The pond I have is not your usual pond though. Mine is a mini pond made out of a 55 gallon rubbermaid. And it is elevated so toads can't get in and they also can't get out. Once the tadpoles I got turned to toads I had to get them out so they could be free.


The toads I got are local to the area too. And the thing with toads is they do not need water as much as frogs do. Their skin can dry out a little, but they do need to keep cool and have a shady spot to hide. What I read about these toads is they are nocturnal too, but I don't know if that is true for all toads.

Toads are in my garden but I never see them. If I did a hole 6" deep with straight up sides a toad can not get out. Every morning there will be 1 to 4 toads in the hole. These are small 1" long toads. I release the toads and the next day more toads in the hole. I got to wondering if the same toads are in the hole so I dug several more holes is different places. Next morning I had 11 toads in the holes. Next I dug an ditch about 6 ft long sides straight up like the holes next morning 7 toads in the ditch and 9 toads in the holes. Released the toads next moring I caught 21 toads. Those little 1" toads can not jump out of a 6" deep hole. I never see toads during the day I don't know where they hide during the day. It is funny toads are too stupid not to jump in a hole.