A Toad Friendly Garden

A Toad Friendly Garden by Catherine Kavassalis for the Oakville Horticultural Society

I have loved being in the garden since I was knee high to my mother. My mother was from a North Dakota farming family and was transplanted by my father to a Zimbabwe mission, where I was born. Caring for the land and all its creatures was an early lesson. For me gardening must be for more than human pleasure, it must support the natural environment. As an environmentalist, with a science background, I try to make environmentally sound choices, but like many of you, sometimes find it hard to balance what is practical, interesting and aesthetic with what is best for the environment. Over the coming months, I hope to share with you some thoughts and ideas for environmentally friendly gardening. Let me begin with how to prepare a toad-friendly garden for the winter.…………

It is my goal to one day find toads regularly over-wintering in my yard. So as I prepare my garden for winter, I ask myself – would this encourage a toad to live here?

Its now mid fall and I have already emptied my compost bins and distributed the new soil around the yard. (Compost suppresses disease and wards off pests by providing nutrients and beneficial micro-organisms, http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/compost/disease.pdf) Mountains of glorious leaves are covering the ground. Although it would be best for toads if I just let them lie, I am unwilling to give up my lawns and tended gardens. The next best choice I can make is to finely distribute some of the leaves over the lawn with a mulching mower, and then, with a chipper/shredder, create a mulch to distribute around the beds. About 5 to 10 cm of cover should still allow oxygen and water to reach the soil and carbon dioxide to exit. (Whole leaves can be raked into beds, but care should be taken to avoid smothering rot-prone plants.) Mulching - recycles nutrients, reduces spring weeding, reduces water loss, and provides winter protection for your plants while also providing habitat for wildlife. American toads, Bufo americanus, need to be able to dig deeply into dead leaves and soil to hibernate for the winter.

For the most part, I don’t cut back perennials in the fall. Their dried framework provides some winter protection and interest (and it helps me remember where things are in the spring). In addition, dried seed heads provide birds’ winter food and standing woody canes provide wildlife winter habitat. Now, not all wildlife is welcome in my garden and in the fall I try to remove infested or diseased material. This year, for instance, Viburnum leaf beetle (Pyrrhalta viburni) devoured my Viburnum opulus. Although American toads can eat as many as 1,000 beetles, slugs, snails, etc., a day, they are unlikely to help me manage this problem. To reduce or hopefully eliminate next year’s beetle population, I will sharply cut back the shrubs to remove the over-wintering beetle eggs (http://www.hort.cornell.edu/vlb/#). As gardeners we make these choices all the time - choosing to support one species of plant or animal over another. How do we know which to choose? Next time, I will write about invasive species.

May toads nestle in your flower beds and help you tend your beauties in the spring.