Getting the turtle enclosure ready for summer

May 11, 2026

(25.04.2026)

It’s finally getting warm enough for my turtles to return from hibernation. And last week they even spent a couple of days in their temporary daytime enclosure.

Oval two by two meter grass enclosure surrounded by a small green metal fence.
Inside of it are two small wooden huts, two small plants inside pots and a pair of as feeding bowls.
A turtle is resting in the shade of the hut closer to the camera. The other turtle is hiding in the shade of one of the plants.

With the weather forecast predicting good weather all week, my turtles will soon be more active and move into their summer enclosure.
As are currently seeing about 0 degrees at night, the turtles will only be staying out during the day. But as the nights get warmer, they will soon spend all their time outside.

Photo of a large grass area fully overgrown by grass and weeds.
Through the grass you can make out some plants and parts of a green metal fence.
In the top left, you can see the walls of a small greenhouse.

Like every year, most of the enclosure is currently overgrown by weeds, which have to be plugged. I also have to put back some of the objects I removed over winter, like the tiny huts, I made last year.

Plants

While I sort through all the weeds, I figured we could look at a couple of the plants in the enclosure.

Closeup of a crab apple tree branch.
A small wooden stump grows from it and expands into multiple green shoots with closed red flower buds on each end.

Last year I planted this crab apple tree in the enclosure, and let me tell you: It is so beautiful.
Soon, the closed, red flower buds will open and blossom into beautiful white, star-shaped flower buds, giving the tree a glowing effect, almost like it is covered in snow.

Closeup of a wild strawberry plant amidst leftover leaves from winter.

My turtles love eating fruits, like wild strawberries. But I only ever give them small amounts, as they should not base their entire diet off of them.
A couple of years ago, I planted some wild strawberries directly in their enclosure, hoping that they would pick them from the bushes.
Most of the time they don’t do so though, instead I have to pick them and serve them. I might have seen one turtle eat them off the bush last year, but that might just be wishful thinking to be honest.
When I first planted the wild strawberries I was worried that it would be too dry in the summer, or too cold in the winter, but as you can see, the wild strawberries are doing just fine. They are even sprouting in some other places in the enclosure; maybe one day the turtles can walk through a tiny strawberry field.

Closeup of a butterfly stonecrop plant.
The leaves are almost oval with some pointy bits along the sides. They are facing towards the sky and get smaller the further up the stems they go.

Another plant my turtles love eating is butterfly stonecrop - especially the crisp and juicy leaves. They like them so much, I planted three plants scattered around the enclosure, to keep up the their demand.
If they get too desperate, you might even see them trying to break off stems, by climbing on top of them. But most of the time, they just eat them directly off the plant.

RIP: Waterfall

I read online that you are supposed to provide turtles with a bunch of different terrain they can walk over. So far, they have grass, sand, pebbles and wood.
Keeping with this trend, I tried installing a small water feature into the enclosure last year, hoping that the turtles would enjoy walking through a flowing water stream.
I bought a cheap membrane pump and a 5 volt solar panel online and hooked them up together. To be honest, I was surprised to see how little sunshine was required to get the pump going fast.

Portrait photograph of a small stone wall which is overgrown with cushion plants.
A basin filled with water is placed on the bottom of the wall and a small stream of water is dripping down into it from a second water basin on the top of the wall.

Unfortunately the pump kept clogging up and the water basins kept running out of water, due to evaporation and because the surrounding plants naturally extended their arms into the water basin. The turtles also carried a lot of sand into the water way, which probably didn’t help the pump.
All of these factors combined mean that I probably wont replace the pump this year. Instead, I’ll probably just fill the basins up manually, because I really like the way the waterfall looks.

Weeds

There is quite an assortment of random grass in the enclosure, which keeps popping up. It doesn’t look good when cut down, so I always just pull it out.

The enclosure is also overgrown with ground elder, which gets everywhere, and sadly seems to be taking over our entire garden.
However, I learned that you can eat the leaves (especially the soft ones), so I collected some of them, and I hope we can make something with them later.
I left some of the other sprouts untouched, but attempted to rip out most of the ground elder roots. Apparently, it is impossible to get rid of them, but I’m hoping to contain them at least a little bit.

Results

After about an hour or so of plugging, cutting and rearranging, the enclosure is finally ready for the turtles to move back in.

I honestly just love watching the turtles snooze in the sunlight, they are so adorable when they have their eyes closed and slowly bob their heads arounds.

Photo of two turtles relaxing in the sunlight.
The sunlight reflects of the bumps on their shells.

It is also a joy to see them wander around their enclosure, smelling plants or climbing onto small rocks.

Photo of a turtle eating with its front legs propped up on a flat flower pot that has flipped upside down with food on it.
In the back, a second turtle is sitting next to a wooden hut, facing away from the camera and towards salad leaves.

Bonus: Trying to make Ground Elder pesto

As I mentioned above, I picked a bunch of ground elder leaves, especially the younger, softer ones, and I’m left with a heaped plate full, which we’ll try to use now.

Small white plate on a kitchen surface.
The plate is filled with green leaves that are placed chaotically on it.

I did a quick search for ground elder recipes, and making pesto kept coming up a lot, so I figured we could try following my basil pesto recipe, but replace the basic with the ground elder leaves.

As it was often mentioned online, I gave the ground elder leaves a good wash and removed the stems.
Because I wanted a fairly accurate weight measurement, I left them to dry in the sun for a short period of time, and apparently I harvested about 20 grams worth of leaves.
This is about half of my pesto recipe, so I just halved everything.

Similar to when I made the basil pesto, I didn’t want to use hard-cheese, and because we still had some in the fridge, I went with a four-cheese-mix.
When I was looking for recipes online, I also saw a lot of people add some lemon zest, and because our lemon tree recently lost a fresh lemon, I grated some of the zest into the pesto.

In the end, I was left with this lovely green peso, with cheese and cashews in it.
I think I may have added a little bit too much oil, but you can probably use a spoon to remove some of it.

Small jar filled with an oily looking green substance with white chunks in it.

You are probably wondering how it tastes, don’t you.
I’m really disappointed to tell you, but it tastes really bad. Well, it just tastes of leaves. When I tasted some of the leaves on their own earlier, they had this carroty taste to them, which is also often mentioned online.
Honestly, I’m not sure what I did wrong, I know my basil recipe isn’t exactly the perfect base, but I doubt that the leafy taste is caused by the recipe.

🔵 Note
Hi, future me here: I gave the pesto a stir a couple of days later, and tasted small amounts of it again. It seems like some leaves have this carroty taste and others don’t, which is probably why I ended up with this leafy taste.
I went around the garden and tasted some of the other ground elder leaves at various stages in their growth cycle and I think that you have to get the timing just right for the carroty taste. The young, light green, leaves haven’t developed the flavor yet, and the older ones have a weird bitterness to them.
I guess I’ll just have to try this again some other time.

Bonus 2: Sunshine

Hi, it is future me again.
I’m currently editing this post on 03.05.2026 and now that the sun is out for longer, a lot has happened in the enclosure.

As expected, the crab apple started flowering and it looks amazing.

Close up of the white, opened flower buds of the crab apple tree.
Each of the buds forms a star shape with its five flower petals and the yellow core.
The flower petals in the middle of the photo reflect the orange light of the sunset, giving them an almost glowing appearance.
The flower buds are spread all over the branches, making the branches almost impossible to see.

When we were looking at some of the plants earlier, I mentioned that my turtles love eating the leaves of the butterfly stonecrop plants.
Well, they apparently love it so much, that they ate almost an entire plant worth of it.
They left the other two mostly alone, I’m guessing because their leaves aren’t as juice and crisp.

Photo of a mostly destroyed butterfly stonecrop plant.
Most stems have been eaten up all the way to the ground. Only a couple leaves remain on the few stems that are somewhat intact. And most of them have bite marks on them.

I also decided to add another plant to the enclosure.
It is a small rhododendron, which will grow a wider leaf cover over time, which should provide welcome shade from the summer sun.

Newly planted rhododendron bush.
Its young light green leaves are glowing in the sunshine, while the rest of the bush appears dark.

Maybe I’ll post more pictures of the plants as they grow on my Fediverse account, but for now, I’ll leave you with photos of Sage (small turtle) and Basil (large turtle) snoozing.

A small turtle resting in the shade of an old tree stump. A larger turtle resting inside a short concrete tube.