Design
Landscaping
Maintenance
Commercial
Irrigation
Planting
Indoor Gardens
Water Features
News
Gallery
Frog Blog
Testimonials
T & C
Contact Us
O
Frog Blog...
April 2010
April at last!
Sometimes in the last 12 weeks it seemed like spring would never come. Did we finish all the cutting back of ivy and shrubs? If not, better check carefully for bird nests before getting out the hedge trimmer. Many birds are already sitting on eggs now, so its quite easy to spot nests by watching the birds come and go, feeding their sitting partners, or taking their turn on the eggs.
The breeding season is in full swing for other creatures too. Frog spawn (eggs) is already hatching, and the little black tadpoles will soon be swimming about. Ponds with plenty of frogs tend to go a bit green at this time, because the jelly of the frogspawn, left after the tadpoles have hatched, breaks down in the water into a nutrient - rich soup, encouraging the growth of free swimming single celled algae, or plant plankton, causing "green water". Don't be tempted to use water cleaning chemicals to deal with this totally natural phenomenon. It clears of its own accord quite quickly, as the tiny animals, the zooplankton, feed on these green morsels, and re-establish a balance.
If you want to speed up the cleaning process, you can buy from most pet shops (and any garden centre with a fish department) little bags of live daphnia, which are minute crustaceans (related to shrimps), which eat the plant plankton. It's easy to tell if they are still alive when you buy them, because you can see them hopping about in the water, which gives them their common name of "water fleas". Buy a few bags (they're usually about £1 per bag), and quickly take them home (they don't stay alive for long in the bag) and empty the bags straight into your pond. In a few days you'll start to see the difference. Of course, fish love to eat these little bite - sized animals, so if you have fish in your pond, you'll have to add more daphnia every few days to keep up the numbers. If you have no fish (which is great for a wildlife pond), the daphnia will multiply by themselves.
x
x
Archive...
October 2010
August / September 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
February 2010
January 2010
Fruit and Veg
Obsessive Tidiness
Irrigation
Foxes and Pets
Knotweed Control
Tree Surgery Advise
Horse Chestnut
Mycorrhizal Root Treatment
Water Conservation
The Vine Weevil
Water - The Garden Lifeblood
Climate Change & Bug Life
Busy Lizzies
