Are you fed up with rodents ruining your precious produce and flowers? Here’s How to Have a Rat Free Garden without doing much!
Nothing spoils “blissfully lost in the garden” feels like rodents! Be it your fresh lettuce, juicy strawberries, or even cardboard boxes and electrical wires—rats spare none! They are easily the scourge of all your prized garden staples, but we show you how to keep a rat-free garden without hurting them as much as possible!
What Brings Rats to Your Garden?
Rats are often unwelcome visitors in gardens. They damage plants, chew on bulbs, contaminate food, spread diseases, and more. But who invited them?
You may not like this answer, but it’s probably you. Hear us out! Rats are omnivores and eat pretty much anything—fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, crumbs, leftovers, and pet food. Even garbage and compost piles are goldmines for these rodents, as they often contain scraps they can munch on.
And your garden’s warm, cozy, sheltered ambiance is all the more attractive as they seek places to hide and raise their young. So, if you have dense vegetation, overgrown areas, and piles of debris—rats will be your regular visitors until there is nothing left to come for!
Gaps or holes in the foundation of your home or shed can serve as entry points. But don’t worry, even we have tricks to outsmart these persistent rodents and keep them out of your garden for good!
How To Have a Rat-Free Garden
1. Get a Cat
Ok, in all honesty, your well-fed, cushy housecat is probably least interested in engaging in some Tom and Jerry action in the garden. But the rats don’t know this! Even if your cat isn’t the most gifted hunter, just lurking around in the garden is enough to send chills down their spine!
Grow some catnip or catmint to incentivize your feline babies to spend more time outdoors.
2. Use Onions to Repel Rats
Now we never really found out if garlic can truly repel vampires, but we tell you with certainty that onions will keep rodents away! You perhaps cannot cultivate large portions in your backyard, but surely some strategic placement of onions in pots will help.
Or else, simply take whole onions, or chop up bits, and place them at the suspected entry points. If there are some dodgy holes in the ground, drop a few pieces there as well. Rats hate the pungent smell of raw onions, and that’s how this goes!
However, they unsuspectingly eat cooked onions, which will slowly and painfully kill them—maybe you don’t want to get so brutal with your rats.
3. Try Ammonia
Rats seem to love and hate a lot of the same things we do! Take, for instance, ammonia’s odor, which kind of reminds them of urine, potentially of predators. We reckon it’s fear more than repulsion, but works all the same!
Make a solution by mixing two cups of ammonia, a quarter cup of water, and two teaspoons of detergent in a bowl. Keep this bowl in areas where your rats frequent, and they won’t come there anymore. You can dip cotton balls in this solution and spread them all over, but avoid placing them right next to veggies, fruits, and other edibles.
4. Attract Birds that Prey on Rats
Birds of prey can be a significant remedy for addressing the issue of rats in your garden. Hawks, falcons, eagles, and owls prey on rats. So yeah, we said we don’t need to kill them, but technically, it’s the birds that are doing the killing—au naturale!
Also, rats are smart enough to scram at the sight of these predators. They’ll likely not hang around to be hunted, but will think twice before stepping into your garden again. Throw in some bird baths, perches, and nesting boxes to go the extra mile in welcoming birds, or grow native plants that lure them in.
5. Grow Herbs that Repel Rats
If you want to keep your garden delicious and rat-free, grow herbs! The strong scent of herbs like mint, basil, garlic, oregano, lavender, and thyme overwhelms their delicate sense of smell.
Create a garden border with these herbs to thoroughly fortify and block shady entry points. This will give the garden an aesthetic design and provide a natural screen against these obstinate pets—sorry, we mean pests!
6. Rat Traps that Don’t Kill
These traps capture rats alive without hurting a single fur on their cute little bodies! Once you trap them, take them somewhere far, far away, and release!
These traps can accommodate more than one rat, so wait till they collect, and then take them “out” on a little family excursion—or in this case, expulsion! Don’t leave these traps unattended, as they may die in there with no food or water.
But seriously avoid poisons, snap traps, electric traps, and other torture devices—stuff of nightmares!
7. Use Ultrasonic Sound Gadgets
Many gadgets use ultrasonic frequencies that generate sound and vibrations that quietly (to our ears) scare away rats. And, there are solar-powered ones out in the market. So you can just leave it in your sunny garden near the plants they are attracted to, and it will charge up in the sunshine and do the work!
This is an excellent eco-friendly way to get rid of rats in the garden. It is also a humane way of utilizing technology to repel rats, and you can easily find them online.
8. Secure Scattered Pet Food
Food attracts every animal, including rats. So that piece of meaty treat lying in the garden that your cat or dog decided to waste is a magnet for rats! If you have chickens or other pets, ensure that their food is kept secure and not accessible to rats.
Even birdfeeders attract rats and squirrels! So, place the grains in a manner that rats find hard to detect. Keep your garden clean; don’t throw food scraps, etc, all over, and cover your dustbins, compost bins, etc. Apart from deterring rats, your garden will just feel much cleaner and nicer to hang in!
9. Take Expert Help
In rare cases, maybe rats have already taken over, and all these preventive measures won’t do anything to solve this problem! Then, the last resort is to call on the professionals. They are trained to not only fix the issue but also identify the root cause and provide you with long-term solutions. So put in those extra dollars and call them!
