The Tallamy Toad Tote

The Dr. Doug Tallamy Toad Tote

One minute into Dr. Tallamys talk at the Tulsa garden center (Thursday August 19th 2010) and I was picturing our tadpoles, turning into tiny toads or frogs leaping from the wheel barrow and landing… where? And can they jump that far when so tiny?

I know from my own yard that a small body of water can be greatly appreciated by frogs and toads; just an area where I water pots every day is populated with the hoppers. When I placed a plastic garden tote in the ground in my lawn, no plantings, nothing but a bucket of water in the ground I came home the next day to find a frog floating in it! How desperate does an amphibian have to be to move into a bucket or wheel barrow?

Dr Tallamy tells of moving into a new subdivision at age 9 and becoming determined to watch the tadpoles next door turn into toads which he did just minutes before the bulldozer showed up to turn the toad abode into a human home! See the second link below for more of his story.

Of course the home could have been built with a wetland intact (see the first link for why) but even now we just don’t think about giving back some of our yard to those who lived there before we built our home. But my task was clear, give the toads a chance to hop out of a ground level “pond” not a 3 foot high wheelbarrow and leave a little wetland available for them to return to and in exchange they will eat bugs in our vegetable garden.

That’s why I bought the Tallamy Toad Tote! A green plastic 20 gallon garden tote to bury near the wheel barrow and transfer the toads into and why one of our garden art projects (Saturday August 28 2010 8 am to noon) will be to build toad abodes. These can be as simple as a hollow log or a stone with space to creep under or as elaborate as a painted gourd or upside down flower pot with an opening to hop into covering a damp piece of earth. We just water the toads when we water the garden.

Join us Saturday for our art in the garden event and to celebrate our toads with our toad abodes. If you have something we can work into a project (wind chime, mosaic, sign etc.) bring it or just show up we have plenty of projects you can help with.

www.bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardening-for-life


http://books.google.com/books?id=JA45XbUm48gC&lpg=PP1&dq=douglas+tallamy+bringing+nature+home&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false