Rats can quickly become a nuisance in the garden, but there’s one common kitchen ingredient that can help to keep them away – and it couldn’t be easier to use
Rats will flee when they ‘take one sniff’ of your cooking staple(Image: Nigel Harris via Getty Images)
Rats are frequently attracted to gardens as they offer everything these pests require for survival – sustenance, water, and refuge. Dropped fruit, vegetable plots, compost heaps, and bird feeding stations serve as convenient food supplies, whilst thick bushes, outbuildings, and timber stacks provide secure hideaways.
A garden can rapidly transform into an appealing environment for rats when circumstances are favourable, making it crucial for property owners to grasp what lures them and methods to deter these unwanted guests. These bothersome pests threaten your garden’s appearance as they consume your vegetation and distribute faeces everywhere.
Additionally, these animals carry diseases including leptospirosis, salmonella, and hantavirus and can breed at a startling speed. Consequently, if you notice any rodents in your garden, you need to respond swiftly to eliminate them.
Experts at Epic Gardening and Buzz Boss both advocate one specific repellent for addressing rats: onions, reports the Express. Lorin Mielsen at Epic Gardening noted how onions have a pungent aroma and that rats “hate them”. Moreover, you don’t even need to grow them for this approach to work effectively.
Simply place an onion where you suspect the rats are entering, and “they will take one smell and run out of your garden”. Using this method, it’s essential to change the onion every few days, or it will rot.
As an option, consider growing garlic around the edges of your garden borders. This method tends to repel various pests, not just rodents. The specialists at Buzz Boss proclaimed that onions are a “cooking staple that’s a nemesis of rats”.
They explained: “It’s a powerful rat repellent because of its pungent smell and taste. Onion contains sulphur compounds that irritate the eyes and nose (of rats, too) and allicin, which can cause anaemia and oxygen deprivation in rats if ingested.”
Nevertheless, the specialists at Buzz Boss recommend growing onions in your garden to guarantee an abundant supply. Onions are a cool-season crop that can be grown from seeds, sets, or transplants.
They flourish in full sunlight and fertile, moist soil. Harvesting can occur once the bulbs have completely matured and the tops start to yellow and fall over.
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