11 February 2012

There's a rat in my greenhouse what am I gonna do?

It has been quite a long freeze this, got to -5°C last night. The plot is pretty solid and covered in icy snow so not much to be done there. However, the greenhouses are getting to toasty +12°C during the day so sowing stuff is going to plan.

Got to the plot today and found some vermin had managed to tunnel into one of my greenhouses and run amok digging up pots looking for tasty seeds. The little sods managed to dispatch a few healthy pea and cauliflower plants I had going, but totally wiped out the broad beans I had sown. I have now resow the broad beans!!! This has happened before, so I just find the hole block it off with some heavy bricks and should be ok....fingers crossed

Also put new onion sets in seed trays..not much else!!!

Bloody pea killing vermin!!!!

Rats dug up my healthy peas

All broad beans dug up

Lost a few cauliflowers

Warm 12°C in the greenhouse

Resown everything lost

Vermin proofed the plants

Ice solid allotment


Frozen solid water butts

6 comments:

Margaret said...

Oh dear, Ben hope you manage to keep the rat out now. It's so annoying when all your hard work is destroyed.
I found a rat on the compost heap at our allotment. It shot off pretty quickly and so did I!

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about the vermin problems. Damn nuisance!! Might be an idea to put the pots etc into large trays with upturned trays over them with a brick on top of each. The large supermarket bread trays are good if u can get them.

Ben Scoble said...

Cheers everyone! Hopefully blocking up the entrance hole will help and making getting to the pots more difficult.

Anonymous said...

We have rats coming up into our greenhouse. The ratman put out bait, but they keep coming back, tunnelling uderneath. has yours come back? We are in the UK and this has happened over the last 3 weeks cold weather.
How do we disinfect everything in the greenhouse??

Ben Scoble said...

Well judging by the size of the hole I found I would say it was a mouse. However, rats are all over the allotment all the time. I would assume that the week long freeze just made the vermin more desperate and dig into places for food - this always happens during big freezes - people often find vermin get into their homes more during big freezes!! I have but a brick course on the inside of the greenhouse so digging is difficult for the vermin. let's hope that does the trick! I suggest finding all the rat tunnels and collapsing them, then rat proofing the entrances. Not a fan of poisoned bait so do not use it. I find the physical barriers and putting seeds / sown pots high on wire shelving does the trick.

Jan ( was anonymous) said...

Thanks Ben,
The rat man put poison down the 3rd hole they dug, and left rrays of poison. My husband filled it in, but they came back. The brick idea is good, or he may put cement down the hole. We will spray everything and the ground with that very strong disinfectant - can't remember the name and then my husband says he will put down somepolythene when we are sure the rats have gone. This certainly makes a blot on our greenhouse haven. The rat man told us 4 people die each year with Weills desease !! Yuk !!