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Slugs In Garden

Toads love slugs. If you have slugs in your garden, create a habitat for toads and there will be many less slugs munching on flower and vegetable plants.

Toads eat a huge amount of insects every day. An adult toad can eat up to 100 insects a day. Besides slugs, toads love flea beetles, bean and cucumber beetles, cutworms, cabbage loopers, grasshoppers, flies, spiders, and many more.

Attracting Toads To Your Garden

To attract toads to the garden mulch beds heavily with straw or dried organic grass clippings. Put rocks and stones in places for them to sit on and warm up. Place broken flower pots in areas where the toads can crawl under them for a home.

Maintain a cool, dark area in the garden for your toad’s home. Have a small pan of water close by. Toads need the water to lay their eggs in and drink.

Practice organic gardening. Provide a garden free of poisonous pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers. These chemicals kill toads.

How To Care For Toads

Toads will need food to keep them from wandering to other areas of food. Beetles, millipedes, centipedes, etc. love being in the damp soil under mulch and leaf litter. Keep these organic materials in the garden. A small compost pile will attract these toad morsels as well.

Install small low-voltage lights to attract insects at night. Toads have been found to sit perfectly still under these lights to feast on the incoming insects.
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Beware of using coffee grounds. Caffeine is poisonous to toads.

Author Marilyn Pokorney
Copyright Marilyn Pokorney 2021