Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Design and Construction => Topic started by: leeky on March 12, 2007, 23:47
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Hi folks :D
Would it be beneficial to scoop out say a 6 foot hole a bit over a foot deep and line it with a liner to create a pond on the plot? tucked in the corner out of the way it may help with water collection too, if butts get depleted in a hot summer for instance.
Will frogs be attracted to it and if so I believe they are good to get rid of slugs?
what do you think? :?:
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waste of good growing ground in my thinking :wink:
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well thats another one sorted. thanks munty :lol:
talking of water butts, a geezer on the plot has the biggest waterbutt Ive ever seen. must be 10 feet tall and nearly as wide . in fact im not sure it used to be a water butt at all! :lol: :lol:
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you can get the fertiliser tanks from farms if ya ask they hold 500 galls i think but dont quote me .i know they dang heavy and have a tap :lol:
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Ponds are a great idea for allotments. They attract all sorts of wildlife but especially frogs and toads and they do reduce the numbers of slugs.......(apart from HUGE ones called 'erbert!!) This is my 3rd year of having a pond and this year for the first time the frogs and toads have spawned...it's fantastic! In the summertime we get lots of dragonflies and damsel flies. If my pond gets overfull it drains into a bog garden...which again brings different beneficial insects feeding on the flowers. My allotment neighbours are really please with my pond.....especially as the slug population is down. :) Also, when supervised, children can get a good insight as to what lurks in the water below with pond dipping :)
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hey Munty, maybe its a surplus nuclear shelter?
agapanthus, thanks for that. sounds great. how big is your pond?
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About 7' x 5' plus a 4' x 5' bog garden :)
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dont be daft . a nuke bunker would be to small for folks who is tall loike wot i am ....... mind it would be fine for shortarse shaun :wink:
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And here I was thinking you were over 5 ft tall, Munty :lol: :lol:
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now now guys :lol:
nice one agapanthus!
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dont be daft . a nuke bunker would be to small for folks who is tall loike wot i am ....... mind it would be fine for shortarse shaun :wink:
i heard that tommy :lol:
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I've dug a pond, 8ft round, 2ft 6in deep in the middle with a gentle slope. There were water boatmen on it within hours of filling and now in year 2 its got frogs, dragonflies, water skippers and even newts. Beware that the amount of soil that comes out of it is about 3 times the amount of soil that was in it, and here is your chance to fill some raised beds. I don't find it any good as a water reservoir because if the water butts are empty, such a shallow pond is nearly empty too. In fact I filled it from my water butts twice last summer. Well worth the space for the fascination of the wildlife, and the frogs are good slug eaters. I have put a little deck on the side and sit and contemplate when gardening degenerates into wine drinking
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I have a little one, pond that is, got me frogs/ slug bashers in and they will be earning there keep this year or the garlic will have new friends to keep compnany in the pot. It looks nice and peacefull, boy I must be getting old.
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I have a little one, pond that is, got me frogs/ slug bashers in and they will be earning there keep this year or the garlic will have new friends to keep compnany in the pot. It looks nice and peacefull, boy I must be getting old.
Ain't we all !! :)
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Like the contemplation bit,I find we don`t do too much of that.Sometimes it`s nice to sit and really see what we have achieved.
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hmm. maybe a moat then! :wink: :lol:
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Ay up, not as daft as it sounds, at leat you wont get bothered by cats on your new dug beds, but you must fit a draw bridge.
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Hi! We made a recycled pond last year using our old sand pit. It's just the right size for our back garden and we're hoping the frog we saw might leave us some frogspawn? I got another sand pit from freecycle and am hoping to put that one on the allotment this year to help with pest control! It might also amuse the kids for a bit when they get bored digging weeds?!
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You probably won't have enough depth in an old sand pit for frogs to survive over winter. They dig into the mud at the bottom of the pond. The water needs to be about 2" (at the very, very least 18") to ensure they don't freeze to death if the weather is hard :cry:
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Yes I realise they need somewhere to hibernate so was planning a nearby pile of logs and rocks for them. There are definately frogs on the allotment site as we see them quite a bit so I guess they already have somewhere to hibernate - might just fancy a swim?
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How do you know they are not toads?
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Yes I realise they need somewhere to hibernate so was planning a nearby pile of logs and rocks for them. There are definately frogs on the allotment site as we see them quite a bit so I guess they already have somewhere to hibernate - might just fancy a swim?
They only hibernate in the bottom of ponds Angel, and they generally go back to the pond they were hatched in.
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thought they hibernate out of the water they would drown otherwise
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They can breath through their skin Shaun, I'll go find you some info.
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Look here Shaun :arrow: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/483.shtml
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well you learn something new every day :lol:
but some hibernate out of the water :wink:
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but some hibernate out of the water :wink:
Not commonly. Only if they have to and it is far more dangerous for them if the weather is bad or they get found and eaten :shock:
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but some hibernate out of the water :wink:
Not commonly. Only if they have to and it is far more dangerous for them if the weather is bad or they get found and eaten :shock:
that's as good a reason as any! :lol:
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and what about if the pond drys up in the winter :wink:
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Shaun... Aunty is going to have to speak to you about your attention seeking behaviour :wink:
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I've just spotted this post. The allotment next to us has a sunken bathtub, and it's full of tadpoles. Brilliant, only thing is there's a competition on as to who falls in first cos it's right next door to the grass path !!!!
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nice :lol:
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I have found that youngster froggies freshly made from tadpoles hibernate outside of the pond deep in the undergrowth for their first winter, they then return to the pond in about April or May time.
When they are fully grown adult frogs they do hibernate at the bottom of the pond. That's why it's important, when creating a wildlife friendly pond, to acquire a bucket of sludge from the bottom of another wildlife pond to deposit at the bottom of the newly created pond. :)
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Thanks for that top tip, Milkman. I'll be sure to tell our lottie neighbour next time I see him. Can't have the froggies homeless during the winter - and the thought of frozen froggies is even more horrendous. I mean to say, we might be in the EU along with France, but we're Brits for goodness sake - toad in the hole is more our style !
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They do hibernate out of ponds, we had a small pond in the garden that they spawned in, but it was never deep enough for them to hibernate. The trouble with ponds is that if you have a very cold snap a 3ft pond will freeze top to bottom.
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Doesn't any one dig wells any more?
Nearly every plot where I grow used to have one about 20 years ago, but they might only work in clay soil with a high water table.
Get 2 steel oil drums and cut off the bases, then dig a slightly larger diameter hole and keep lower the first steel tube in.
Now the scary bit (but maybe not if you've done pipe jacking). Climb inside the drum and start digging under it whilst some one above pulls up the spoil using a bucket and rope and also pushing it down for another couple of feet. Then use a long post hole borer (the type which has a lever to release the spoil) to work from above, but the occasional foray down a rope to clear out is required. It gets very messy working below ground water level and you have to keep baling out.
Place a large slab over, or construct a corbelled brick upstand with a smaller cover over.
After a thunderstorm they would fill right up and sometimes surcharge and flood all around.
Don't know what a H&S Officer would say these days. Probably better sited in your back garden with cast iron hand pump over.