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Fruits
- Papaya
- Star Fruit
- Surinam Cherry
- Tamarind
- Dragon Fruit Cactus
Other
- Aloe Vera
- Tillandsia Recurvata (moss balls)

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- Chicken Wire/mesh
- Plastic Containers
- Stakes
- PVC Pipes

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plant around the perimeter to keep them away

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Have you noticed the tell-tale signs of rats, mice or rodents in your garden (dark droppings the size of a grain of rice, holes, fresh mounds of dirt and nibbled or disappearing plants)? If so, it's time to take action, using barriers, traps, and plants that keep rats away from your hard-earned garden space.

Rodents are smart and curious creatures, happy to make a home in or near regular food and water sources - like a garden. The more you do to make your garden and yard spaces un-inviting, the less likely rats and mice are to stick around - and that requires a holistic approach to garden design.

Create A Rodent UN-Friendly Garden Space

Peter Rabbit gets all the sympathy in Beatrix Potter's childhood classics, but grown-up gardeners are more likely to sympathize with Mr. MacGregor's plight. The following tips and recommendations make gardens less hospitable to rodents, increasing your yield, diminishing the risks of rodent-borne pathogens and making it less likely for rats and mice to infiltrate your home.

Include plants that keep rats away

Particular plants have scents that act as natural repellants. By incorporating them into your garden plan - as borders or interspersing them through your edible and flowering plants, neighborhood rodents will be more inclined to forage elsewhere.

Plants known to deter rats, mice, and rodents include:

Marigolds (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Peppermint (Mentha piperita)

Lavender (Lavandula)

Onions (Allium sepa)

Grape Hyacinth (Muscari a sparagaceae)

Garlic (Allium sativum)

Daffodils

Oregano (Origanum vulgare)

Sage (Salvia officinalis)

Cayenne

Black pepper

Tomatoes

The flavors and scents of these plants (and their roots) are repellents to many rodents and insects, so they help to keep them away. You can also sprinkle crushed flowers from these plants around the garden, create solutions of water and the offending herbs or crushed garlic to spray around the borders and on plants being targeted by rats and other rodents, to further discourage attention. Since many of the herbs listed above are used regularly by cooks, they're a win-win for your garden.

Other Plants That Keep Rats Away

The ultimate goal is to keep rats and rodents out of the garden without using harmful chemicals, poisons, and pesticides that post a threat to your pets or your children. In addition to integrating plants that keep rats away, the following tips can also keep rodents at bay:

Keep compost wet and rotated

Your compost pile provides a wealth of nutrients to the garden. However, until it's fully composted, it also serves as a rich feeding trough for a myriad of animals, insects, and bugs - rats and other rodents love to scavenge the fresh scraps. Turning your compost regularly, burying new scrap additions right away and spraying it with water makes it more difficult for rodents to access the food.

Move woodpiles regularly

Woodpiles are a perfect nesting ground for rodents. Moving them around makes it harder for rodents to set up a permanent home. This frustrates them, and they'll eventually migrate somewhere else.

Get rid of brush and leaf piles

Those brush and leaf piles are another nest-friendly place for rodents to live and take shelter. Once the leaves are raked and the clippings are piled up - get them into your compost, or bagged up and into a yard waste bin, so they don't attract rats and mice.

Line garden beds on the bottoms and sides with rodent-proof mesh

Rats and mice can squeeze through spaces the size of a dime! Speak to your landscape company or garden supply store about installing rodent-proof wire mesh on the bottoms and along the sides of raised garden beds. While rats and mice do enjoy nibbling leaves and fresh fruits/veggies, they're just as likely to access plants and their roots from below ground (they tunnel and burrow just like gophers and moles).

Bay Area Landscapes is dedicated to designing and maintaining beautiful landscapes, integrating eco-friendly pest and rodent solutions. Contact us to learn more about how we can design a garden you'll love - but that keeps the rats away!

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Plants That Keep Rats Away From Your Garden | Bay Area Landscapes

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Have you noticed the tell-tale signs of rats, mice or rodents in your garden (dark droppings the size of a grain of rice, holes, fresh mounds of dirt and nibbled or disappearing plants)? If so, it's time to take action, using barriers, traps, and plants that keep rats away from your hard-earned garden space.

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Just the system would be cool. However, we need to design a system that both saves space yet maximizes sunlight absorption

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How to cultivate food for 7.3 billion world population is always a perplexing question. Total agricultural land is getting depleted and majority of population is depending on food cultivated by less than 5% of total population. More over in-order to maximise the production, farmers from under developed and developing countries are using pesticides and fertilizers beyond recommended limits. Some developed countries have already given green signal for Genetically Modified (GM) crops. This is leading to dangerous and non curable health problems like cancer.

Do we have a solution for this problem? Can't we produce our own herbs and vegetables? But in the absence of sufficient land space for cultivation, what can we do ?

Answer to all these questions is Aquaponics. It is a symbiotic system which is very common in nature. It uses both aquaculture, which involves growing and breeding of fish and hydroponics,(Here is 9 hydroponics systems to start indoor garden.) which is cultivating plants in water without soil.

Lets take a look at the aquaponics cycle:

As I explained before, this is a symbiotic relationship between fish, plants and micro organisms. Fish droppings contain ammonia, which is toxic for fish as well, if concentration exceeds beyond a limit. Plants cannot utilize ammonia as a fertilizer directly. But there are some micro organisms which can convert this ammonia to nitrites and then to nitrates. Nitrates serve as a good nutrients for plant growth and fish can live in this clean and aerated water.

A typical Aquaponics system block diagram:

A grow bed is used to cultivate herbs and vegetables. This grow bed is used to culture micro organisms which then converts ammonia to nitrites and then to nitrates. You can choose the size of grow bed and aquarium depending on the quantity of herbs and vegetables you are planning to grow. If you choose a bigger fish tank ( mostly suitable for outdoors) you can grow different types of fish, that becomes a source of food as well.

What are the recommended herbs, vegetables and fishes for aquaponics?

The plants that can be grown in an aquaponics system are:

Leafy lettuce, Cabbage, Cauliflower

Herbs like Mint, Basil, Chives etc. Here is list a of 19 herbal plants which can be grown in your kitchen. You can also choose some herbs from this list for your aquaponics system after consulting an expert.

Veggies like Tomatoes, Cucumber, Peas, Beans are also successful in this system.

Recommended fish varieties are:

Tilapia, very commonly available and used in aquaponic system.

Kio is best choice if you are looking for a colorful fish.

Salmon, Crap and Catfish , if you have a bigger fish tank and if you plan to use fish also as a food source.

Tip: Choose fish which is locally available so that it can withstand climatic conditions such as temperature and pH.

Also read about a complete list of plants and fishes recommended by Nelson Pade of Aquaponics.com

Aquaponic Systems and prototypes available in market:

1: Aquaponicals

This is a creation from an Australian company Aquaponicals in Brisbane. They make small and decorative aquaponic systems for home, classroom and office space. The image shown below are white and black aquaponical systems from this company. They ships their products to New Zealand, Australia, USA and Canada. This commercial aquaponics system costs nearly 149USD.

Image [ Via : Aquaponicals : Bringing aquaponics system into home office and classroom ]

2: Grove Labs

Idea formulated by 2 MIT Engineers, Gabe Blanchet and Jamie Byron, to start an indoor garden. They got this idea of using fish poop as fertilizer for plants, then they integrated this to their hydroponic system. They started this project on Nov 2015 and successfully got sufficient backing and required funds in Dec 2015 through kickstarter.com. Now this system is ready for pre-order. Currently the company has funding of more than 2 million USD mostly from Venture Capitalist and Angel Investors. Recently they got featured in CNBC news : Tank to table: Start-up bets on fish poop to grow dinner. Its cost is around 4500USD now.

Image [ Via: Grove Eco system Grow fresh food in your home ]

3: Kijani Grows

This is another Oakland based startup in aquaponics system by Eric Mandu. He tries to create a smart garden by integrating his indoor garden with computers. His aquaponic garden with sensors makes it a smart aquaponic system. This system contains linux computer controlled sensors to give sufficient water and lighting , which can be controlled by computers. Now this smart garden is available for purchase in Kijani Grows website.

Image [ Smart garden : kijani grows ]

4: Therapeutic Aquaponic System by N. I Teijin Shoji

This is an aquaponics system developed by N I Teijin Shoji mainly for therapeutic purpose. This tubular aquaponic system with vegetables and ornamental fish was developed by Japanese A.A.C , an aquarium production company. It costs approx. 3800USD.

Image [ Via : DigiInfo TV ]

5: The Blue green Box:

This is a kickstarter project by Andrew de Melo. This system includes a 10 gallon fresh water aquarium with gold fish and 4 grow beds filled with gravel. This project was an unsuccessful attempt in kickstarter.com.

Image [ Via Kickstarter.com : Andrew de Melo The blue Green Box ]

6: Eco Farm

This is another kickstarter project from Alex and Nacho of Eco Bird, a Dutch start up Company. This small and mini eco system contains a fish tank and grow bed to grow veggies and herbs for your salad. This is a table top aquaponics system can be used to grow organic herbs and also to have a small aquarium on your kitchen table. Its also was an unsuccessful attempt in kickstarter.com.

Image [ Via : EcoFarm : Grow fresh food with your mini eco system ]

7: The Goldfish Garden.

Another kickstarter project by Ryan Coghlan. This is a self cleaning aquarium with a small garden on top, which comprises of edible herbs and veggies. This prototype also became unsuccessful because it didn't get sufficient financial support.

Image [ Via: The goldfish garden - self cleaning aquarium ]

8: Grow Tank By Sophia Nicolson

This prototype was developed by a student of Edinburgh College of Arts, named Sophia Nicholson.

Image [ Via: Edinburgh College of Art : Grow tank ]

Reference:

1. What is Aquaponics - from theaquaponicsource.com

2. Evolution of Aquaponic - From Aquaponic Journals 2002 by Scott Jones

3. For outdoor and large scale aquaponic cultivation, here is a patented Clear Flow Aquaponic system from Aquaponic.com | Nelson Pade. This package involves commercial & home food production and social mission.

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Aquaponics systems that makes you self sustained for food

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Aquaponics systems that makes you self sustained for food. A symbiotic system with plants, fish and bacterias. It uses aquaculture and hydroponics to grow herbs How to cultivate food for 7.3 billion world population is always a perplexing question. Total agricultural land is getting depleted and majority of population is depending on food cultivated by less than 5% of total population.

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The Green Wall - Educational Vertical Garden Bottle System Project

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using plants that tend to sprawl out, you can train them to grow on arches or wire.

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I used to grow my squash on the ground, and train the vines to stay in a neat row (well, as neat as squash can be). Not anymore, I designed and built a DIY squash arch to tame my squash, and now I have a wonderful piece of architecture in my garden too.

Squash is a bully in the garden, and it will take over if you don't control it. Now that I have my squash arch, the squash in my garden grows vertically, and it's so much easier to control in my small vegetable garden plot.

How To Build A Squash Arch

It was extremely easy to put this arch together. Originally, I was going to build it the same way I built my cucumber arch trellis. But the metal garden fencing I used isn't strong enough to hold up heavy squash on it's own around the top of the arch.

So we (my husband helped me with this project) came up with a design that uses PVC piping to support the fencing over the top of the arch.

To make the arch tall enough, we needed two pieces of PVC pipe for each side. We glued them together using a special PVC glue and then weaved the PVC into the fencing.

Once the squash arch was up, I spray painted the PVC black to make it look like metal. You can paint it any color you want, be creative! Just make sure to paint it before you plant any seedlings so they don't get sprayed with paint.

Also, it's better to paint the squash arch after you put it up. If you paint it first, then the paint will get scratched when you start to move the squash arch around. Be sure to use a plastics spray paint too, so that it sticks to the PVC.

Growing Squash On A Squash Arch

Many people are afraid to grow squash vertically because it's so heavy. But, most of the squash sit on top of the arch. If any squash start to hang down, I put them back on top.

The heavy squash can also be supported by making a sling out of an old t-shirt or nylons to support their weight as they mature.

My favorite types of squash plants to grow on my DIY garden arch are Sugar Pie Pumpkins, Butternut and Delicata.

Amazing right? Who knew squash could be so beautiful! I'm super excited about this arch, I absolutely love it! So many people rave about it, and it's the focal point of my vegetable garden.

It has made squash plant control very easy, and the squash no longer takes over the garden. It also makes harvesting the squash a breeze, since I don't have to bend down and hunt for it.

If you love my unique DIY squash arch design and want to build your own, click the button below to download the detailed squash arch instructions today!

Interested in building your very own Squash Arch?
Click the "Buy Now!" button to purchase your step-by-step instructions.

Building A Squash Arch - Step-by-Step Instructions

If you loved my squash arch project, and want even more step-by-step vertical gardening projects, then my new book, Vertical Vegetables: Simple Projects That Deliver More Yield In Less Space is just for you! In it you will learn all about vertical vegetable gardening, and get detailed step-by-step instructions for nearly two dozen unique and beautiful vertical gardening structures and supports designed by me! Order your copy today!

Learn more about my new book: Vertical Vegetables.

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Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of my squash arch design.

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How To Build A Squash Arch For Your Garden

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I used to grow my squash on the ground, and train the vines to stay in a neat row (well, as neat as squash can be). Not anymore, I designed and built a DIY squash arch to tame my squash, and now I have a wonderful piece of architecture in my garden too.