Rats are a bane of house gardens. The rodents carry myriad ailments, wreak havoc on property and decimate crops. Rats are not choosy when it comes to food or shelter sources. They’re known to live in burrows, colonies and essentially any spaces both small and nondescript, like attics and big, open places such as fields. Several food sources attract these vermin, including garbage bins, compost piles and gardens. Although rats eat anything and do anything to live, they aim gardens due to their availability of fresh produce, like tomatoes. You can keep rats away from your tomato crops by making their environments uncomfortable and by exterminating them.
Sanitation — Deterrent
Move all of garden equipment, pipes, firewood, crates, boxes and other items from the ground surrounding the garden to off-the ground locations. Doing this decreases rats’ available shelter.
Thin or eliminate dense vegetation, like scaling hedges, and tree limbs that overhang within 3 feet of construction roofs to produce the rats’ habitat less comfy.
Move dense-growing plants and bushes like juniper and pyracantha a minimum two feet from structures and each other to inhibit rats’ ability to move between their canopies.
Fit your trashcans with rodent-proof lids. Remove garbage and debris lying near the tomato plants.
Extermination — Traps
Examine your garden for signs of rats, like concentrations of rat dander, signs of gnawing and fruit hurt. This can allow you to determine the areas that attract the vermin. Also look for suspected rat nest sites, burrows and colonies.
Inspect the areas round the backyard and places where mice form runways. Runways are trampled strips of land which vermin run on their way from shelter to a food supply, and vice versa.
Lay rat traps on the runways and adjacent to the tomato plants. Also put traps in burrows and other areas that indicate the existence of rats. Space the traps around 20 feet from each other.
Bait the rat traps with kibbled pet food, bacon, dried fruit or nuts, and arm, or place, the traps. Avoid using cheese or peanut butter to lure the traps because rats often take that food without putting off the traps. Check the traps a few times every day so you can eliminate them as quickly as possible when they catch rats.
Extermination — Rodenticide
Position bait stations at the very same areas you placed rat traps — burrows, runways and areas that signify a rat existence. Use plastic ties to anchor each bait station to a construction, including a fence or post, to prevent animals from moving it.
Open each bait station, and put on latex or plastic gloves. Put inside every bait station the rodenticide which was supplied with the channel. Some bait stations consist of ready-to-use bait, whereas others require the user to mix rodenticide pellets with a food supply, like peanut butter or cheese.
Close each bait station’s cover. Check the bait stations daily for dead rats and/or to replenish bait.
