Garden Notes

Small toad at home in backyard

I have always wondered where toads and frogs go during our long winters. I knew they were supposed to hibernate, but had never actually seen one in cold weather. All that changed this fall. I was helping our daughter-in-law plant a few tulips and daffodils in their front garden in late October. This sounds simple, but the garden in question had 2 layers of landscape cloth and a lot of rock mulch.

When this home was purchased about 10 years ago, the garden was nicely landscaped with roses and shrubs. When Jen decided that she wanted a few spring bulbs, I helped her plant them. This bulb planting consisted of scraping away the rocks and cutting a cross slit into 2 layers of landscape cloth. We dug out enough dirt to make room for the tulips or daffodils, inserted bulbs and replaced the dirt. Then in the top couple of inches we planted grape hyacinths to mark the new plantings and placed a thin layer of rocks on top. Since grape hyacinths put up some little greens in the fall, it is a good way to know where your bulbs are planted and they make a colorful addition to the spring garden.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and this fall we decided to replant the same garden with new bulbs because the original ones were now very sparse and almost none of them bloomed anymore. So in late October we set out to plant the new bulbs. In surveying the garden, we decided that the logical thing to do was to dig up the original clumps. They were nicely marked by hyacinth greens and we planned to replace the original tulips and daffodils with brand new bulbs.

We started planting only to find that in digging the first couple of holes there was a small toad hibernating in each. Apparently, when the weather turned cold, the layers of landscape cloth were too much to deal with so the toads dug into the tulip and daffodil holes to rest for the winter. It was just pure luck that we didn’t slice the poor little things in half while digging. We replanted both of those original holes with bulbs, placed one little toad back into each hole and covered them all up. Needless to say we decided not to disturb any more toads, and made new holes for the rest of the plantings.

So, in conclusion, I guess this story is just about explaining for where toads go in the winter. As it turns out they are still in the garden hibernating about 4 inches underground.