Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wow cucumbers bombing! Like the stand concept too.

Thanks Frostyboy.
It has taken a good 12 months for this system to finally come good.
These crops are the best I have had so far and sumer has only just begun.
The Strawberries, Tomatoes, Watermelon, Beetroot, Cucumbers, Basil, Spinach and lettuce all going
crazy at the moment. Very very happy to finally see some decent produce.

So it's been a long long time since I have posted. I have finished the main parts of the house Reno and have started to get things going again with the AP. I planted some broccoli plants and they started growing really well. I went to Phuket for a holiday and now seam to have a rat problem. All the heads had been eaten. At first I thought someone had cut them all off but after closer inspection I can see the teeth marks. The plants started to grow more heads and now they also have been eaten.
Does anyone know what the hell to do to stop these buggers eating everything?

You could try sprinkling powered cayenne (red) pepper on the plants you don't want them to eat. That's what I do to my outside garden, and it works against pretty much every mammal pest.

That's a good idea I would just have to try and keep them dry. How often do you have to apply?

I usually have to apply only once, and then the animals seem to have an aversion to those plants, probably because it irritated them so much. But I've never dealt with rats, so it might be different. Over here the garden-eating pests are mostly raccoons and chipmunks. My chickens sample my garden produce too, but there's nothing I can do about that.

Thanks for that, I will certainly give it a try. Another thing I thought of was to flood the bed higher for awhile.
I am pretty sure rodents don't like wet feet so it might deter them a little.

MMmmm I wonder if rodents like beetroot. I will soon find out as I just planted 8 of them last night.
These are in a different bed to the one I am flooding higher so will be interesting to see what happens.

Now the bloody rats are eating my passion fruit in the dirt garden. How does one get rid of these buggers.

My friend swears by the Rat Zapper. It's battery powered and doesn't use poisons.

I might have to look into one of them. They are driving me mad eating everything.

Rats eat holes in the shade cloth bags I put over my cherry and apricot trees to stop Qld Fruit Fly and birds, then they eat the cherries and the kernels out of the stones, they ate seeds out of the sunflowers, and they love beetroot- they eat it all the way down into the ground. Every single plant was destroyed. They also ate off a lot of the chard, eating through the base. A lot of seeds of various plants were also eaten, we think by mice, rather than rats.

The rat zapper has caught a few, but they get smart and just ignore it after a while, we had them out in the garden. We tried plaster of paris mixed with flour, they ate some, but the fruit and vegies kept getting eaten. There was a bit of a plague of them last year, and in the end we had to get those blue waxy rat bait blocks that you screw onto a surface, I can't think of the brand offf hand. That was the only thing that worked well enough to stop the desruction.

I think it is called Rodenticide. I have tried it but I think I need to get a lot more.
I will have to try a number of different solutions poison, rat zapper, bucket traps.
Give me something else to do on the weekend.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. At the blueberry farm down the road, they play a recording of a hawk screaming. They say it deters the birds from the area from helping themselves to the berries, leaving them for the paying customers. Is that an option for you? Imagine the neighbors wouldn't appreciate it at first... but then again, maybe they want the rats gone as well and would be willing to put up with a bit of noise temporarily.

One evening when you've got a few hours, pop a "Stay Awake" pill and lay out there under a piece of shade cloth with a pellet gun.

Or pay some high school kid a dollar per dead rat. Give him a six-pack and enough ammo for the pellet gun and he may surprise you with a bucket full of rats in the morning.

You may want to try leaving a dead rat hanging from the side of the growbed. Not nice but it may deter the rest of the little shits.

At any rate, I wouldn't eat anything out of that system until next season. No telling what kind of nasties they may be leaving on the rest of the produce.

While the idea of rat waste is rather nasty and I would certainly try hard to minimize rat contact with my AP system, you might also want to realize that the USDA or FDA or whoever does the inspections actually has an "acceptable level" for rodent droppings in food. I expect this primarily applies to grain stores BUT thought I would mention it to put things in perspective.

I don't think I would flat out say throw away everything from a system that has seen a rodent, but if one wants to be cautious, it might be better to only use the produce that will be well washed AND cooked.