06-20-2020, 10:00 PM
(06-20-2020, 09:56 AM)Hotzcatz Wrote: Rats Eat Corn! Who knew? They don't wait for it to be ripe or even picked, they will CLIMB UP THE CORN STALKS and eat the corn! AAARRGH! So, if you're growing sweet corn, bribe your cat to live in the garden.
Unfortunately for us, it's called 'Jack's Garden' because our cat Jack - who even though he was a very elderly cat was still a good ratter - succumbed to old age right when we were getting ready to fill in the new raised bed garden. So now, it's 'Jack's Garden' and the rats are triumphantly romping about eating the corn since even though Jack is in the garden, he is no longer able to roust them out.
It seemed like there were two options, either put out rat bait or put out cat food and hope a new cat showed up. After due consideration, it was determined that rats would probably enjoy the catfood which would encourage even more rats so we put out rat baits and now the corn isn't being eaten by rats anymore.
We have a similar issue, except it's squirrels and figs, pears, the raised garden bed and all flower pots. We built a chicken wire cover for the raised bed, cut rounds out of chicken wire to place in the pots (keeps squirrels from digging) and tried placing nylon net bags around the fruit in the trees. The bags did not work.