Kitchen Garden Forum

The frogs have been active in the pond for the past two weeks but they all seem to be males hence no frog spawn yet. Do you know if it is usual for the males to come out of hibernation before the females or whether mine are just a bit late turning up? The males are all in good voice advertising their presence.

Our first frog spawn arrived two days ago and since then huge amounts have appeared. Comparing the 'first" dates for the last few years, I see that it is about a week earlier than last year (not surprising, considering last year's cold spring), but very much in line with previous years.

There had certainly been frog activity the whole week before, PP, so I am sure your frog spawn will appear soon!

It is interesting to note that the frog spawn always arrives about fortnight earlier in our garden pond (see above) than on the village nature reserve which is only about 100 feet away but less sheltered and sunny. The second pond is also much larger and deeper.

We normally have up to 17 breeding pairs in our small pond but this year up to now we have none at all

After the early sightings of frogs, they have not re-appeared again yet, but fingers crossed.

No sign of frogspawn down here in Dorset - at least not in my garden pond. Lots of frogs and noisy goings-on....but no end result yet.

Not even the sighting of a frog in our mini pond yet. I have a horrible feeling that the local heron may have gobbled them all up last year. I don,t know how old a frog has to be before it's mature enough to mate.

We have the first ones in the pond croaking away at present

Went away for weekend and found three batches of frogspawn when we returned, but no sign of any frogs so they obviously did their business quickly and cleared off before the heron got wind of them. And two newts have appeared too, so all is well for another year!

Well the 40+ boy frogs can finally stop mating one another - going around doing the conga! Two females turned up yesterday and produced lots of frogspawn. I just hope a few more turn up so the two first arrivals don't get drowned in the melee.

The frogs appeared back end of Feb, I filled the pond in last year and put 2 greenhouses on it, the silly beggars are finding their way in and are still holding the area.
The maximum I counted was 72 at one time in the Garden, I assume they hope it will fill with water.

I didn't realise the homing instinct was so strong. Need a couple of toads to arrive so I can locate them in the greenhouses for pest control.

According to the guys who wrote 'The Wrong kind of Snow' March 9th is about the average for when frog spawn appears. But in my garden ponds they are always early and frog spawn appeared Jan 30th this year and the wrigglies hatched out about Mar 7th. No idea why these ones are so early as elsewhere around here they seem fairly 'normal'.

I read somewhere that frogs always return to the pond where they hatched, so you are probably stuck with them Sandyback.

I was puzzled why there was no frog spawn earlier this year since we had had such a mild winter. Often they start at the end of January or certainly during February. Mid March isunusual. They seem to have finished now with lots of spawn in the shallows and a lot fewer little heads popping up to sing.

some appeared this week (Middlesex) in the allotment pond.

Still no frogs, or spawn, i'm sure the herons are to blame, but i am still hopeful.

Come and get ours we have three very large mounds!! They have been very busy all week. Unfortunately I have a frog phobia going back to childhood when I stood on a frog with bare feet I can't stand touching them, if they jump up in the borders when I am weeding I scream like a child and my OH knows what has happened. They frighten the living daylights out of me. Though I do like to hear them croaking in the pond. My OH waits till they have been really busy and then he removes almost all the frog spawn in the pond and takes it down to a local pond for it to continue.