Rats are one of those animals that many people have strong feelings about, either they hate
them or love them, and they are often the main concern when talking about composting systems.
Personally, I think they're amazing animals, and I'm quite content having them in and around my
compost piles, and I'd actually rather they build their nests in the compost, rather than nesting in
the gardens or in the surrounding landscape. There are a very common guideline to not add cooked
foods, meats and oils or other similar material to the compost, as they will attract rats. I've
found that rats will nest in compost piles even if these potential food sources are avoided,
so I take more of an everything goes type of approach to the compost systems that I manage,
especially as they are located far away from any houses or other buildings. So I've become quite
tolerant to rats being around, except for when they pass over all of the good things to eat
that we put in the compost piles and instead eat the vegetables straight from my gardens.
The first time that I realised that rats were eating vegetables in the gardens, was a number
of years ago when I felt that the crop of peas was not as abundant as I had anticipated it would be,
it seemed that someone else was helping themselves to the pods.
Then, one day I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and saw a rat climbing down the pea
vines and hiding underneath the other plants. A few minutes later it came out again, climbed up
the pea plants, bit off a full pod of peas, which it kept in its mouth as it climbed down and ran
under the plants again, a process that it repeated several times before I finally chased it away.
I figured it had taken the pods back to its nest somewhere for storage, but a while later I found
a patch of opened pods and the remains of chewed peas under vegetable plants nearby. A rat had
been removing the peas to eat in a more secure location before going back for more. I haven't
noticed this happening to the same extent since then, but I could be regularly losing peas without
noticing it. But last year I grew a long line peas in the scrap ground between two polytunnels,
with the purpose of saving seeds for growing pea shoots. Because these plants were out of the way,
and I wasn't checking them regularly, I didn't find out until too late that most of the pods had
been taken, and I found the remains of many pods under the plants that had being eaten by rats.
But fresh peas aren't the only seeds that I've discovered rats eating. A
few years ago I was growing microgreens in one of my polytunnels, which involves a dense sowing
of seeds on the surface of the soil, and after a few successful batches, I noticed a lot of
damage to the patch of sunflower seeds. At first it I thought it was mice,
but using a wildlife camera I discovered that rats were also loving the partially sprouted seeds,
gathering them up to take them back to their nest. They did so much damage to the crop
that I decided to give up on growing microgreens this way until I could get rid of the rats. So
rats definitely like to eat seeds, which is not surprising as they are quite nutritious,
and I have wondered if they're responsible for the failed germination of some batches
of seeds that I have sown in the past, and now I suspect that there
have been enjoying the treats that I buried in a straight line for them.
But it isn't just the seeds that the rats seem to enjoy in my gardens. I was quite surprised
to find the developing beetroot being chewed by something while they were still in the ground,
and seeing a rat scurry into the beetroot patch, and examining the shape of the bite
marks left in the root, I realised it was definitely rats enjoying these vegetables.
An occasionally nibble here and there is tolerable, but I've had a few batches that had
a lot of damage, and it seems that the closed canopy of the leaves provides an ideal hiding
space for the rats, who can happily munch away at one beetroot after another for weeks. And
unless I do regular checks, they can cause significant damage to most of the beetroots in
the bed before I notice anything, as the plants seem to be able to continue to grow reasonably
well even with a lot of its root chewed away. And they've also sampled the base of the chard plants,
which are close relatives to the beetroot plants, though they haven't done so much damage,
and I am not surprised, as I also prefer to eat beetroot rather than the roots of chard plants.
I've had the same issue with carrots, with substantial damage being done to the crop
without me noticing. This is also partially due to the closed canopy formed by the multiple rows of
plants in the bed, and with lots of open space underneath the leaves for easy access by these
creatures. But the fine mesh that I cover all carrot crops with to prevent carrot fly damage,
also helps to obscure the view, and in a few cases I only noticed the extent of
the damage when I removed the cover to harvest my prized vegetables. As
with beetroot, a fair amount of damage can be done in a relatively short space of time,
as the rats seem to go through the bed eating a bit from the exposed top of each root.
This makes a lot of the crop unsuitable to passing on to other people, but the damaged part can often
be cut off and the rest of the root is salvageable for those of us who are willing to do the work
and are not to squeamish about having part of the crop chewed by another creature at some
point in the past. While I have lost quite a few high value early carrots this way,
the damage to the main crop of carrots that I grow for storage can be even worse. The
longer the roots are in the ground, the more damage can be done, and I have found roots that
were eaten down quite far below the surface of the soil. I used to keep these carrots in the soil for
longer over winter, and only harvested them as needed them, as I found they kept in much better
quality in the soil. But now I am more inclined to harvest all the carrots in
the autumn so that I can enjoy more of them, rather than having to share them with the rats.
It makes sense to me that rats will eat seeds, though I didn't expect them to enjoy roots so
much, but it is their preference for tomatoes that really surprises me. Finding partially
ripe tomatoes on the vine with large sections already eaten, was the first obvious sign,
and my wildlife camera came in handy to determine that it was in fact rats doing the damage. They
would happily munch on the lower hanging fruit, but I also found that they were quite content to
climb the vines and eat the tomatoes the were much higher on the plant. But with the smaller cherry
tomatoes, it seems that they were taking down the tiny fruit one at a time to eat under the cover
of other plants in the polytunnel, before going back for another. I found patches of fragments of
tomato skins when I cleared some of the adjacent plants, and a few months later had a flush of
tomato seedlings to weed out which had sprouted from all of the seeds that were left behind. I
haven't noticed the same level of rat damage to any of the other fruiting crops,
but I suspect that they have sampled a few peppers in the polytunnel. And
a few years ago I did find a squash with a lot of the flesh hollowed out
and all the seeds missing, but thankfully that hasn't happened again since.
It seems that it takes a while for the rats to discover that
the plants that I'm growing in the gardens are not only just edible,
but perhaps preferable to the goodies that they can find on the compost pile.
There have been rats in and around the gardens and compost for years, but only fairly recently
has there been lots of vegetables eaten in the gardens, and I wonder why that is. Part of this
could simply be that the population of rats has been higher than in the past, because I wanted
to see if the local cats, as well as the fox, and owls and other birds of prey in the area would do
the job of keeping the number down to a reasonable level. This didn't work, and there ended up being
a much higher population of rats because I hadn't kept up with the task of culling their numbers.
And is seems that more rats means that some of them made nests farther away from the compost
piles, and perhaps it was simply an issue of proximity, that the vegetables in the gardens
were closer to their nests. I also suspect that it takes a while for them to realise how edible
some of the things in the garden could be, or to learn that they're available at a certain time
of the year. And once they learn something is good to eat, that knowledge is passed on to other rats,
especially the next generation. I'd also like to think that the vegetables that I grow are just so
delicious that they are the preferred treat, and I should see this as a compliment, but who knows.
So, more recently I've taken on the responsibility once again of getting the population levels of the
rats down to a much lower level, and now that they know of all the good things to eat in my gardens,
this has become a much more important task. When they were mainly eating things out of the compost,
I was much more tolerant of a certain number being around,
but now I feel, like I need to try to eradicate them from the surrounding landscape.
With rats being so common in the landscape around here, it's impossible to eliminate them entirely
from the area around the gardens, as others will simply migrate in, but I at least want to get
rid of the ones that have taken a preference to the vegetables that are growing in my gardens.
I have tried many types of traps and different strategies for dealing with rats, including
using dogs and digging out the nests, but I have had much more success recently with asphyxiating
them in their nests and burrows. Once I find a nest, either in the compost, or in the surrounding
overgrown landscape, I try to locate and seal off of the entrances, except one. Then I simply run
my flame weeder torch into the remaining hole for a few minutes, filling the tunnels and nest with
smoke and carbon dioxide, and burning off all the oxygen, effectively suffocating any rats in place,
then I seal up the hole to keep in the gases in and prevent any of the rats escaping.
If I was in a different context, or in a dryer climate, I would probably use a different method,
but in this situation, I have found this to be the most effective and easiest way to reduce the rat
population in the area. It does mean that I need to be very observant of possible rat runs, and
I regularly do the rounds to search for any new burrows in likely places. But I've been able to
significantly reduce their population levels over this past winter and will keep a close eye out
for additional nests as we head into the breeding season. This isn't something that I really want to
do, as I'm quite content with them being in and around the compost or in the broader landscape.
But when they start messing with the vegetables in my gardens, things have gone too far, and I
need to adopt a much more aggressive strategy of keeping their numbers as low as possible .
Last week I missed the opportunity to mention a milestone that we passed on this channel,
as the video that I uploaded prior to this one was my hundredth video on this YouTube channel.
I'm really delighted with the positive response that I've gotten from all of the videos that i've
uploaded to this channel. One hundred videos is a lot, but there's so many more things that I
want to try and explore, and so many other videos that I want to produce and upload to this channel.
If you would like to support me in continuing this adventure, I have a Patreon page for regular
contributions, and a Paypal account for one off donations. Any contributions that you could
make would really help, and I especially want to thank all those Patrons and other contributors,
who have supported this project in the past, as it has allowed me to get to this point,
to get to the point of having a hundred videos. But most importantly, I want to thank everyone
for watching, and I hope that I can continue to make videos that you enjoy and find valuable.