Rats are more likely to sneak into gardens in spring as it is the beginning of their breeding season and they need to find a safe area to nest so they can search for food. This unfortunately means these pesky rodents will dig up flowerbeds and chew up crops in March, which can ruin a garden just beginning to grow if you do not try to deter them now. Many gardeners can resort to poison to try and stop an infestation, but this can be incredibly risky if you have pets or neighbourhood pets coming onto your property. 

Instead, Elizabeth Adams from Urban Locker, has shared an unusual but highly effective way to keep rats away without chemicals, which is to use pickled onion vinegar. 

She said: “You can use expensive chemicals or you can use old rags soaked in pickled onion vinegar. While it sounds silly, the overpowering acidity of the vinegar in the pickled onion disrupts the rat's ability to detect scents which makes your home and garden a no-go zone.” 

How does pickled onion vinegar keep rats away? 

It may sound bizarre, but rats have highly sensitive noses and hate going into areas with strong pungent odours as it disrupts their ability to search for food. 

Pickled onion vinegar will disrupt a rat’s ability to hunt but its sharp acidic smell can also make them feel uncomfortable and overwhelm them, so they will avoid areas where they encountered the smell. 

All you need to do is soak some rags in the pickled onion vinegar and leave them in places rats are likely to appear in your garden. 

Elizabeth said: “You can soak old rags in pickled onion juice and place them near suspected entry points, bin areas and corners of the garden so you can discourage them from lingering in your garden.  Your rags will need to be replaced every few days to maintain effectiveness."

If you wish, you can also make a homemade rat repellent by mixing picked onion juice and water, then spraying it around your garden.

What else stops rats coming into your garden? 

While pickled onion vinegar will keep rats away it has a very strong smell that is likely to annoy humans as well so there are some simple alternatives you can also use. 

Lots of extremely strong smells can repel rats and it is popular on social media to recommend using essential oils but Elizabeth recommends against this method. 

She said: “Other essential oils such as peppermint can deter rats, but they contain volatile organic compounds which are extremely flammable and are a fire hazard, so I would not recommend spraying them around your home."

Instead, a long-term solution to keep rats away is to plant flowers and herbs with extremely fragrant smells as these scents are also known to irritate rodents.

Elizabeth said: “Plants such as lavender, mint, marigolds, daffodils, rosemary, sage and several others can be planted in your garden to disrupt the smell of a rat.  If a rat can't smell inside of your home then it is far less likely to try.”

Using strong smells and keeping your garden as tidy as possible will make it more difficult for rats to search for food so they are more likely to stay away from your home this spring.