I can't speak specifically about the San Diego area, but black rats (house rats, roof rats) are common in residential areas of much of California. Unfotunately, they are a regular part of the fauna where I live. You do want to control them if they start hanging around in your yard. You can get poison bait stations which pets and rabbits cannot get into. You can set rat traps within a container too small for the rabbit to enter.
Bob

The culprits are roof rats. Rather abundant throughout southern CA.

Traps work; but be certain to wire it to something unmoveable. And bait it with a small piece of nutmeat, slathered with peanut butter.

Jean
who previously gardened in Long Beach, CA, for 30-some years

Rat poison, rat poison, rat poison. Get a bait station at HD (green plastic box on the lower shelf) or two.

I must have put out about $100 worth of rat poison last summer before I went crashing through the brush and found a tent on our north forty. I suspect that some of my missing tomatoes were going in that direction too. The bunny will turn into many, many bunnies, unless you get lucky and a coyote takes up residence in your neighborhood.

Yes, rat poison does work.

Butif they go home to die, and if that is in a wall or other inaccessible place in your house, you may be removing walls or parts thereof to get rid of the stench.

Roof or fruit rats don't usually go inside to die.

My last house was on a canyon. I had always wanted to live on a canyon (still do....) because I liked the birds and wildlife. I wasn't quite prepared for the rodent life that came with the other animals. I tried trapping and would still try to trap inside the house, but for outdoors, poison is your friend.

Of course, I'm a woman and I've read that men prefer to murder with weapons while women prefer poison.

In some instances, roof rats live in attics.

Try putting some mint plants all around your tomatoes.
The samething was happening to my lemons earlier this year (low bushy lemon tree), and it worked for us.
Cathy

Are you sure what your hubby saw was a rat? Could it have been a possum? We get those in our tomatoes, also skunks. I protect my tomatoes by hanging bird netting around them so the critters can't get in to the fruit. It's impractical to try trapping, etc..

I have roof rats. They eat my apples and tomatoes. I don't like poison because
#1 what a painful way to die #2 I have animals #3 I don't want to hurt the
wildlife. Yes they will go inside the walls and die. Mine live in the walls and roof.
I invested in a friendly trap and let them loose miles away up in the hills. If you
want to kill them use a rat trap with peanut butter or gummy bears as bait, at
least they die quicker.

Ed-

Oh I've got to chime in on this one. Last year we had the same problem with our tomatoes being nearly in half each day. Thought it was rats/voles/mice since we have a compost pile going in the garden area, so we set one of the spring-loaded rat, not mice, rat traps in the garden. First thing we caught was a bird. Ohhhh, felt so bad. Kept happening with the tomatoes being eaten, reset the trap, same thing, caught a bird. But, guess what, the damaged fruit stopped. This year, we sat and watched who the culprit was and it has been determined that its what we thought was like a gray colored bird that looked like a scrub jay type of bird. A friend said its a mocking bird. I mean they have destroyed about half of my ripe tomatoes. Utterly frustrating. We have tried the mylar and balloon in the garden but nothing seems to frighten them. When we are home, we run out and shoooo them away. Our next resort is to get some black netting.

The black netting really works, though it is a pain. Next time you set a rat trap outdoors, put the trap well inside a container of some sort with the container lying on its side. The rats will walk in; birds should not.

Bob

My dad is in North County and he had a mouse eating his tomatoes..we saw him do it!!
He gets mice (not rats) but large mice in his garden.. seem they like tomatoes best!
MBG

One of my neighbors has a dog who eats his tomatos just as they are getting ripe.

Penny

Penny, that's why my tomatoes are fenced in. My dogs would CERTAINLY eat them if they could. :-)

coronabarb

The birds got more than a few of my figs this spring... I'm probably going to net the tree for the fall crop... by that time the raccoons will be back and will probably eat what the birds can't get, lol...

I keep catching my dogs picking the cherry 'maters. They don't bug the yellow ones but delicately pick the ripest of the reds!

Go figure!

PA

my mom has a videotape of rats eating her tomatoes. mostly because the rodents were thirsty.

Ramik rat bait (do a word search for Ramik) is an outdoor, all-weather, green-colored material that is about as effective and safe a material as anything i have ever used... it is an anticoagulant, so when rats eat enough they go OUTSIDE to die... relatively painlessly.

i put a few pellets out and watch them until the suspicious rats start taking them, then i just put out a small packet with a corner torn open, and the rats take it from there. be sure to put the bait under a raised board or something to keep cats and dogs from eating it.

it works VERY well for us!

I have used Ramik before with good results between two fences in a tight space. It was the rat, or me falling down the steps while I'd go by the large Brugmansia next the fence roof rats would rustle down and startle me at night. Unfortunately one decided to die in the open where it needed to be disposed of. Since I cannot get past that tail of theirs, I had somone else do that deed! I also have a Rat Terrier who does not like visitors to HER garden. She's pounced on a skunk.

"I also have a Rat Terrier who does not like visitors to HER garden. She's pounced on a skunk."

Oh boy!!! I hope she never does THAT again, LOL!! What a stink that would be.

I feel like poison is the last resort. If the rats die in the open they can be picked up by hawks or owls - and we sure don't want to reduce THEIR population!!! I think a BIG trap is the best bet.....(if you can get someone else to dispose of it for you!!!!LOL)

Tressa's suggestion is indeed interesting,but we might dig a whole and put the poisoned-to-death rats in it so that predator birds don't get that??Just not sure whether those poison would harm anything else.

Hui Gao

Possums have been eating my very treasured San Marzano tomatoes. They have such keen noses, eating ripen tomatoes before I can pick them. They visit our garden every night and when I first discovered this I was horrified. Truly, they look like giant rats even though I know they are the only marsupial in North America. I tried everything to get rid of them, trapping, water spray motion detector, ammonia towels, moth balls, cayenne pepper--you name it I've done it. Nothing works to get rid of them. There are just too many. So I finally gave up. What seems to work is a fence out of chicken wire around the garden. They can't seem to climb it. As for rats, I don't know what would work except for poison.

Terry,
For your bird problem definitely the motion water spray sensor works very well and probably other critters too like unwelcomed cats and rabbits. I think it is called the Scarcrow motion activated sprinkler. A bit expensive but does keep birds from eating the tomatoes. Netting is probably the cheaper way to go.

Green

I live in San Diego but I dont think the rats are going to be much of a problem between May and Oct/Nov on my property .....killed this sucker the other day...bit my golden retriever...$1300.00 in vet bills...second baby rattler to bite my dog.

{{gwi:543827}}

To those who love using rat poison, remember the wild animals that will eat the dead rats/mice...hawks, owls, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions. It the poison doesn't kill them, it weakens them and they become susceptible to some awful diseases that will then kill them slowly and agonizingly. I've been to a lecture about this, and seen lots of photos of emaciated dead bobcats that were found with high levels of rat poison in their bodies. In my area, the university that was studying this estimated that this was cutting the bobcat population by 35-55%. You should all think about this next time you go to buy rat poison, the rats don't all go inside the house to die. And judging by the number I've caught in the outside Have-a-hart, there are plenty of them outdoors.

When my garden, especially tomatoes, was being eaten alive last year, I put out a Have-a-hart trap and began catching squirrels. That stopped the problem and after catching 9 they stopped coming. This year I only caught 2 before they stopped. I've also been catching rats in the Have-a-hart and much as I dislike them inside my house(they aren't eating in the garden), when you watch them for a while you can develop an appreciation for them...they are smart, and calm, animals. Especially compared to squirrels. I move them to a better zip code (Malibu, a state park) and let them go at the same spot, so if they are family they might find each other.

Possums are easy to catch around here...I used to put some stinky food in a large garbage can, and a ramp for access. They jump in and can't get out. They are berry berry smart!

I live on a gopher hill, so I plant my gardens in 4x10 ft raised beds, with chicken wire floors a foot down. And 24" chicken wire around the area with netting over the top and sides, keeps the rabbits and birds out.

For container gardening, I buy 24" high rolls of 1/4 plastic mesh, form a cylinder around the container. The trick is to not use a support(s), squirrels won't climb up the loose plastic because it will collapse under their weight. If it's supported by a tomato cage they will go right up and over the top. In that case you need to close the top somehow. The plastic mesh also keeps rabbits from nibbling, and probably makes it hard for birds.

But the Have-a-hart has been the best solution. Once the squirrels stopped coming my problems disappeared.

jc

Orange County Vector Control has bait stations set around our yard to help with the rat problem. We had to strip our 3 orange trees, quit feeding the birds, trim our trees back from the house as we have really had a wild life refuge in our yard. I have tried everything with the rats but actual poison bait being set out. We have Opossums, squirrels and birds that love our yard and we don't want them to eat the poison. As it is, we have already caught a bird in a rat trap so we don't do that anymore. We found a baby opossum in a glue trap we set out hoping to catch baby rats. That was a story in itself. We spent over an hour cleaning the baby off with mineral oil so he could go toddling off. Last year a young opossum got into our house and lodged itself under our large china closet. Trickery got him out in the end. Our cat befriends the opossums. We learned from Animal Control that cats and opossums are natural friends and have seen one opossum we call Fred playing by our cat with nary a blink from the cat.

One year I had tomatoes in pots along my fence and they were being eaten nightly. We didn't know what it was so we purchased an electric fence device at the feed and grain store, set it up and it did not help at all. We have put mesh all around the plants, weighted it down so animals couldn't get under it. I purchased coyote urine powder and hung that by the tomatoes - no effect at all. All sorts of things we have tried. Vector Control told us the rats were the culprits and educated us in how to tell by the eaten out part of the fruit whether it is opossum or rat.

Well, here we are again with tomato plants. I am thinking of placing sheet metal around the plants somehow to deter the rats. They do that with palm trees - set a metal band around the trunk and the rats can't climb on it. I am determined to raise tomatoes and the rats are determined to eat them.

Does anyone have any unique suggestions? I really want tomatoes this year!

I live in Northwest Arkansas. This morning my husband noticed that a portion of one of our tomato plants had the top almost completly eaten and several tomatoes were gnawed on. There is also animal droppings on the plant leaves. Sort of round pellets. It is raining so is hard to tell what it really looked like. The marks on the tomatoes are more from a gnawer with flat teeth that a beak. Plus the animal would have to be small enough to not break the stems. It had to get pretty high on the plant to eat out the top. The tomatoes are in a large pot probably 30 inches off the ground. Any idea what kind of creature this is?

It is a never-ending battle. I thought I had it won making HUGE cages with shade cloth on top - but - now I have gophers/voles or something that ate the entire tomatoes plants from the bottom!!!!! I do agree with you, jc, I can't put out poison - we have a resident owl and several hawks.....along with a bobcat. I need to talk to them about doing a better job keeping the rodent population down!!! LOL Vera.......your problem sounds like maybe deer....

Rats ugghh.Two years ago I put in two 3'sq tomato raised beds at my parents house in Orange county. The first year we cleared and dug the clay, built the boxes, amended with pricy organics, planted heirlooms that grew huge, out of the texas cages and out over the box, and as they ripened each tomato would get about 1/3 eaten. (Why can't the pests just eat one whole one and leave two?) I put 5' posts at the corners of the boxes, and the enclosed the plants completey with heavy duty plastic bird netting. This took at least a day of sweat and swearing! After a few days we found that the rats just gnawed right through and continued to help themselves.
Last year I only planted two Patio red tomatoes, not as tasty but very compact and produce well. The plants hardly grew larger than the texas cages, and as the tomatos started to redden I bought AVIARY wire, smaller than chicken wire, and wrapped it around the cages, making a closed cone top, and a door in the wire to access the plants. Also making sure that the wire screen is deep into the ground to prevent burrowing. This worked really well and we were able to harvest all the tomatoes ourselves!
This year I have some patios and some celebritys in the boxes, I put them in late so no fruit yet. I plan to build a larger frame and enclose it all in aviary wire. The stuff is expensive, and I don't even want to calculate the price per tomato of this whole process. But it is a labor of love because my mother enjoys fresh tomatoes so very much.
I believe that everyone should grow at least some of their own vegies, like victory gardens. My grandfather did this close to what is now LAX, and though he had some unwanted pests, and I remember he would trap and kill them,nothing like what the problem is for us now. But in urban areas like Orange county the possums,coons,squirels, voles gophers and lovely rats can wipe out all your work in a night. There are also lots of coyotes around, enough that it is not safe to let the cats out, when I was a kid and our cats roamed the roof and garden day and night, and that probably discouraged rats! It is frustrating. It has only gotten worse as the last of the open spaces get built on, which nixes the theory that this things are wild and only venture to our yards and trash cans for supplimentary feeding.
These are all totally urban animals, surviving with no "natural" habitat.