New Wetlands Forum!

Welcome to the new Wetlands forum! This is a place to talk about Mud and plenty of it – whether you’ve got a spring in your backyard, or live on a floodplain - if you’ve got boggy land, or shallow water, this is the place to discuss it!

How to build a home and protect it from the water?
What are the most productive wetlands plants?
How to build chinampa?
You’ll find the answers here – and if you don’t, please feel free to start a new topic!

If you see a thread that would go well in here that we’ve missed, if you are able to add threads to other forums, you can add them to this one too! If not sure, please report it and say something like "add to wetlands" so the wonderful volunteer staff can add it.

Nancy

What a great idea.
I want to improve the habitat for frogs in my barren dams.

John C Daley wrote:I want to improve the habitat for frogs in my barren dams.

Where I live we've got the cutest little green tree frogs and I'm concerned that despite me doing my best to provide a hatch site, they're not nearly as noisy as they were 5 years ago. Weather weirding is the biggest change. I know they're out there, but this is a good reminder that I need to do a bit of research to see if there's anything I can do which might support them better.

They are compatible with human activity: one year I nearly squished one while picking a few lettuce leaves off a plant - it was ticked at me interrupting its nap, and 4 years ago I spotted one near the very top of one of my Scarlet Runner Bean plants.

I think we can go a long way to supporting wetland plants, animals and insects by simply *not* doing harmful things, as opposed to having to do things perfectly or exclusively. Letting things look "messy" or "cluttered", like dead leaves and wood on the ground, are things many part-time wetland creatures, like my tree frogs - consider luxury accommodations!  

When is it wetland and when is it just wet land?

The country I live in -the Netherlands- is known for its wetlands. They are close by. Half an hour or less by bicycle I can go for a walk on the higher paths made through the very wet nature parc (De Wieden / Weerribben, soggy swamps, lakes and streams).

Where my allotment garden is there has been swamp in the past. But then there was a garden centre, they added soil. The garden centre closed after many years and it became small garden plots for rent (allotment is the English word). Now still part of it floods during the wet winter season. I am lucky that's not the case with 'my' garden!

I dug a deep pit to see if it would fill with rain water and if it would stay a pond. At the moment (it's the wet season) it looks like a pond. But in a month or two it will be as good as dry. Not too dry, the water mint was doing well there last year!

This was my rambling about wetlands and wet land

You are located on what may be known as an 'ephemeral' wetland, meaning lasting for a short time.

Thank you, Nancy, for all the hard work you put into making the forum.

It is looking good and catching several folks' attention.