Invite Toads to Your Garden to Control Insects and Slugs

I have often read that toads are great for your garden because they eat lots of insects and slugs. Each toad eats 50 to 100 insects and slugs per day! While I was in the garden last night, I saw three different toads. This one thought I was trespassing on his land!

He is sitting on the board that was supposed to be the side of one of my raised beds. Late last Fall I found out that you can't move a raised bed that is full of soil (duh). If you try to move it even a little, you could pop one of the sides off like I did here.

As it turns out, this mistake of mine was a good thing. The toad family lives under that board. I saw several holes in the ground when I picked it up and the toad in the above picture hopped out. What, you don't see him? He is next to the fourth cucumber plant. Here's a closer look:

See, he's right here ↑. Pretty good camouflage in the garden bed. After seeing two in the cucumber bed, I started searching around the whole garden and found another toad next to these boards that I had laying on the ground waiting for me to build another bed. He is also hard to see in the picture.

So it is now obvious to me that they like the boards on the ground. They are able to hide their holes under the boards.

You can achieve the same thing by placing flower pots upside down in the garden. It's a great way to reuse broken pots.

I've seen people purposely break clay flower pots to make an
opening to help the toads get in and out, thus creating a homemade toad house somewhat like this commercial toad house sold on Amazon.

Many gardeners don't want old boards or broken pots littering their gardens and would rather have something more attractive like this.

Toad houses available on the internet range from simple to extravagant, from cheap to expensive, and from earthy to bright and whimsical.

As an example, look at the toad house diversity I found with a quick visit to Amazon to get the above picture.

And that's only scratching the surface! Who knew there were so many different kinds of toad houses?

The bottom line here is that I recommend you invite toads to your garden. Since our toads moved in, I haven't seen a single slug in the garden! So whether you put out a board, a broken clay pot, a fairy toad house or a toad spaceship, do something to make your garden more accessible to our friends to toads!