You should be able to keep rats excluded enough to have a successful growing season, though it may take some effort and expense at first to get a barrier system built. You can either build a fence or an enclosure over your garden beds or planter boxes / containers. The openings in the wire fence should be no more than a half-inch wide to keep mice and rats out. A commonly-used material is hardware cloth, which is sometimes also called “rat wire.” You can build a frame covered with hardware cloth that can go over your garden. If you decide to just build a fence, you could use the hardware cloth from ground level to 2 feet above ground level to exclude mice and rats, and then use a fencing material that has larger openings from that 2-foot height up to 5 or 6 feet in order to keep out other animals like dogs, squirrels, deer, etc. (if needed). The larger mesh fencing will let pollinators have access to the garden.

The attached photos show a walk-in type enclosure that some gardeners use to exclude wildlife (granted, more for deer and groundhogs than rats in those examples). You can probably find more ideas searching online for "garden enclosures" or "rat proof garden structures."

Here are resources for additional information that may be helpful:

• Baltimore City Department of Public Works – Rat Eradication
• Brooklyn Botanic Garden – Keep Rats Out of Your Garden
• Humane Society – What To Do About Wild Rats
• Oregon State University – Tips for Keeping Rats Out of Home and Garden

Miri