Rats Eat Corn!

[Hotzcatz]

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.

What kind of corn are you growing, and other than the rats how is it doing?  We're growing a type of corn we've never tried before (forget name) and it's a bust.  The stalks themselves are doing GREAT but it's suffering from either early tassel or late silking and it looks like it's not going to pollinate.  Will give it a few more days to confirm but it looks like it's going to be goat feed.

It's a variety called 'True Gold' and we got the seed from Baker Creek  https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetabl...-gold-corn    It's a 'butter' corn instead of the really sweet type of corn, but it's tasty.  We grew it in a raised bed garden and it's intensely planted, perhaps that allowed the rats to climb easier?  I figured if it's closely planted it can pollinate itself easier, too.  Most of the stalks have two ears on them and they all seem to be pretty well pollinated, but we've only eaten a little bit of it so far.  It's supposed to ripen in 80 to 90 days and it only took 76.

---

Cats are about the most organic way to keep rats away. Since rats can chew through, burrow under or climb through  most anything. even the tiniest holes can be climbed through.

The seeds from the UH ag dept. Have always worked well for me. I've grown the corn both outside and in a green house.( the green house ones grew better for some reason.)

UH seed store.

How does the U of H corn taste?  Sometimes I get seeds from them, but my main seed source is Baker Creek Seeds.  They only sell heirloom (open pollinated) non-GMO seed and their germination rate is really close to 100%.  If it's not close to 100%, they send extra seed and a note about a lower germination rate.  Since I was already ordering seed from Baker Creek, I just added the True Gold corn to the order. 

It grew well, it grew fast.  The rats liked it but there's still a lot left for us.  Most every stalk has two ears on it and only two stalks fell over.  We do have a fence around the garden, though, so that helped support it on three sides.

Since we're catless at the moment and the neighbor's dog moved to Canada ( along with the neighbors ) there wasn't a lot of risk of doing in any non-rats so I put rat baits in the garden.  The rat bait disappeared quickly so I added more.  There's a mac nut orchard behind our house and it was cleared out about six weeks ago so all the rats moved down into our back yard since it's heavily overgrown at the moment.  Soon as the fencing is fixed, then we're gonna get some sheep to mow it down.  But, that hasn't happened so there were a lot of rats around after the orchard was cleared.

This is what the rat damage looks like:



Fortunately, they only ate some of it before we noticed.

---

Rats climb our avo trees and eat the hanging fruit as it ripens.
Between 2 cats and a number of poison bait boxes, we're able to hold their damage down quite a bit.

Rats have always been a nuisance to farmers for all stored grain crops.
Little doubt they like corn on the cob too.

Guess I could put out some cat food and encourage a few feral cats to hang around.  They don't have to be house cats to keep the rats out of the corn, most likely?