Green tree frog in my frog friendly garden

During the last lot of rain I heard the calls of three different stripey marsh frogs around my garden!I also heard the deep calls of a green tree frog!

This is so exciting because it has been a few years since I heard our native frogs in my garden. Unfortunately the frogs had been driven out when cane toads overtook my garden. Cane toads out-compete our native frogs for food and they will even eat the frogs.

So why is it important to have a frog-friendly garden?

Frogs tell us so much about our environment. If you have frogs in your garden it means that the area is low in toxic chemicals.

Frogs absorb pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals through their skin and these chemicals kill them! So you won’t see or hear frogs if you or your neighbours use chemicals. This includes all manner of weed killers based on glyphosate, as well as lawn weed and feed products.

How to create a frog-friendly garden?

Pot of water chestnuts where the sedge frogs love to hide

Frog-friendly gardens are easy to create! The first step (and for some people the hardest) is to stop using nasty chemicals!

Then you need to create the perfect environment for the frogs. You can do this by adding a natural water pond or water feature. I use lots of pots for my frog ponds. You can fill them with plants such as water lilies, lotus, water irises and even edible plants such as water celery, watercress and water chestnuts.

Frogs also need places to hide from predators and to keep cool, so it’s important to leave plenty of mulch and leaf litter around. They also need some rocks or logs to sit on and sun themselves. My frogs love using garden statues that I’ve placed in the garden.

Next you need to eliminate cane toads.

These are an introduced pest that will out-compete your native frogs for food. They have even been known to eat native frogs!

Cane toads can be eliminated manually by collecting the frogs and placing them in the fridge until they go to sleep. You then move them into the freezer and from there out into the garbage on garbage night.

I use biodynamic peppers to control cane toads (Magical Biodynamics) . The peppers work on making my garden inhospitable to cane toads so they go elsewhere. This allows space for the frogs to move back in.

Create the perfect environment and the frogs will come! And you will have the joy of knowing that your garden is safe for frogs to live in. And that means that it’s safe for you and your family!

Your Edible Garden Guru

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