I tackled the frog pond today. It only took about an hour. It chucked it down in the morning, too wet for golf, but dried up in the afternoon. So as it wasn't cold I got on with it.
We've always had frogs in our garden, even from before we had either the small pool, or the koi pool,
Back then, I once found a pair of frogs in a stained plastic ice cream container, half full of rainwater I'd put down the side of the garage after doing an oil change on the car I had at the time,
Anyway, the koi pool is unsuitable for frogs to breed. So I gave them this. We used to have a nice water lily in it but over the years the shade from the acer palmum as it grew, meant we got fewer and fewer blooms, so I gave it to a neighbour with a goldfish pond, two years ago and it does very well.
So this is what I'm faced with at the beginning of the year. I try to empty and clean it out before the frogs get in it. They are "around" as we see one occasionally. They over-winter in the folds of the koi pool liner. They sometimes get into the koi pool pump sump and I have to get them out during the purging process.
I've a problem with the roots of this thirty-odd year-old acer palmatum lifting a couple of the coping stones, but I say "it adds character,"
'cos I can't be bothered to re-cement them. The pond is half covered by the leaves of the acer in the summer, so it almost disappears, but the frogs don't mind.
This is my "frog strainer," a riddle on top of an empty wheely bin, I use a bucket to empty much of the water, I then drag the three-quarter full bin down to the kerb and drop the water down the drain in the gutter, it takes half a dozen trips. I get the dregs out with my wet n'dry vac. Didn't find any frogs, too early for them yet.
Sometimes in the Spring the whole surface of the pool gets covered in spawn, of all different consistency, colours and size of eggs.
You can see the lid of the koi pool pump sump. I made it from a 40 gallon big green plastic water butt, set in concrete. It connects to the pool's bottom drain via 4" pipe.
After a bit of a scrub out, I re-fill it.
There's some rocks at one end that are to help the tiny frogs get out, also in case a hedgehog falls in. They can swim but wouldn't be able to get out if the rocks weren't there.
I use a length of conduit positioned under the coping as an overflow, which exits into the channel between the boder and the lawn.
It's best to have an overflow with any pool. The one for the koi pool is a 1.5" pipe that runs under the pool's concrete, collar, then the patio, to a house drain under the kitchen window.
Anyway, a long way to go yet but a few more visits and I am being generous with the mulching.
