Article - Garden Heroes
Garden Heroes
Written by Margeaux Wex
Scaling stems and covered in slime is a beast of a creature with spiral armor and lanky tentacles who maliciously munches away at your marigolds. A most destructive varmint indeed, they can assemble an army and destroy the most tenacious vegetation in a few short days. Most assuredly, you can bet on the plantal carnage they will leave behind.
But have no fear…
Painted in olive and covered in warts comes a fierce protector who fights crime against greenery and destroys the most disturbing of garden villainy, including but not limited to the aforementioned slime beast we know all know as the snail, the blood sucking mosquito, the poop offering house fly and the grody centipede.
Devouring up to a thousand of these undesirable pests per day, our friend and humble hero, the toad packs a powerful punch. His high intelligence and superior night vision allows him to easily spot and attack his prey in the darkest of conditions and his sticky tongue can shoot from his mouth capturing some of the fiercest of insect predators in less than a second with tongue adhesion forces nearly one and half times his body weight.
Undoubtedly, you can count on the toad to reduce the populace of these pestilent creatures and help you have a lush, lively garden, and happy life.
You may be wondering…
How do we assist these tiny heroes? How do we make the lives of toads everywhere joyous and vivacious? How do we help them to rid us of the pestilence of the world?
Here are some easy and helpful tips…
1. Cultivating vegetation native to the land and placing rocks and stones to boost moisture can not only help the plants in your garden, it can help our friend, the toad with water needed to survive.
2. Consider adding a decorative pond to your garden. Toads and Frogs need a slow-moving body of water to breed thus making more super toads. Remember, more toads, less pests. Also, be sure to add staggering stones to help them get out.
3. Create a compost pile. You can compost using food scraps, lawn clippings and leaves found right on your property. Composting helps to enrich the soil and provide even more snacks such as worms, millipedes, slugs, ants and mites offering a smorgasbord of delicious insects that not only will provide your toads with a load of nutrition, but please even the most finicky of toad palates.
4. Protect your toads by adding a toad house or two to your garden. Toad houses provide shading from the sun and give toads protection from predators. Toad houses range in a variety of prices, can be found on many websites and you can find a slew of tutorials if you’d rather make one yourself.
5. While you, by yourself cannot change the world of toads everywhere. You can help by providing support to charities involved in amphibian conservation efforts.
Here are some of my personal favorites:
Check out Save The Frogs
Check out Frog Life
Check out Amphibian Survival Alliance
Thank you for stopping by. 😊 Be sure to share with your friends and leave me a comment below. I love hearing from my readers.
Erik Griffon
That was very interesting. I guess I never really gave a lot of thought to the importance of toads. Now I feel like need an army of toads, and a toad sanctuary !
Linda Swindell
I actually thought this was going to be a horror story, lol! Very surprised that I enjoyed it being an article about toads instead. I’m going to share it (and the website). I’m sure that my friends will enjoy your creative and informative mind as much as I do.
Samantha Matteson
Very informative article. I love how it shows how important these awesome creatures are and how important their conservation is. Love this.
Russ
I love this homage to the toad, it says it all perfectly. I always thought the toad was 2nd rate to the frog…but no more!