Protecting Sweet Corn from Rats with Bamboo
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
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This is what currently happens to any sweet corn cob that is unprotected. Look at that ! completely eaten by rats ! which can be devastating after caring for your plants for 3 months. But with this method I have been developing over the years, of protecting each individual cob with bamboo, if done right, no rat attack whatsoever!
I had rat problems for years until i got cat that is.
I have put socks made from synthetic fabric (like nylon) and the rats stay away pretty well. I have to make sure I fully cover each ear of corn.
Amazing and what a beautiful garden.
What a beautiful head of corn!
Dam, thought I would be first one! :,{
I know what you mean herm, just after I had uploaded it seemed like in an instant I could see comments from you and paganfire. Maybe next time you will be first :)
ah ! abracadebra, and there it is !
perfectly protected ears
... and guess I have seen your av before on pirate-island party, looong ago?
Use plastic water bottles . Works well .
I have tried plastic water bottles as well as using wire netting in a similar way but both of those methods have failed for me when the rats or some big black crow (or is it a raven?) are determined. If water bottles work for you that's great as protecting with bamboo is time consuming. It takes me a good many minutes to protect each cob but sometimes the rats leave them alone with no protection but for the last few years I have needed to protect most of the crops I grow in a season.
Imagine if this was recreated on Seamless3D. That will take a long time.
If you did not simplify at all it would take forever but fortunately simplifying a nature scene in art can make it look appealing. I have seen some voxel art look surprisingly good where plants are made up of just a few voxels. I would like to see how long it would take me to make a sweet corn or a sunflower plant. Once one plant of something is made it can easily be duplicated and placed with different orientations and it should still be within reach to make some variations to the plants to add some complexity without it taking a monstrous amount of time.
@@ThymeFromti Hey Thymey, folks, I think you should test things in VR-glasses, it's fun. ->It's possible to convert old VRML into Unity3D content with Blender and walk inside worlds with it (if one has not such a nice RL-garden like you). ;)
@@ThymeFromti Ok. Thanks for the info.
the bamboo lets air through so the cob doesn't rot?
Because the rats will eat into the cobs if I do not keep the wire around the bamboo tight, I have been worried the kernels will not have room to fill out, especially when I am forced to enclose them at a baby corn stage but they always seem to somehow find enough room to develop so long as I keep the wire tight enough to keep the rats out. The only time I have trouble with sweet corn going mouldy, is when it rains for a long period of time but that happens with no protection too especially if something has gnawed the ends which lets the rain in so I would guess the bamboo only decreases the likelihood of mould if you can protect them before there is any damage. Sweet corn are naturally enclosed inside a green sheath so maybe they do not require outside air flow but I don't know how it all works.
@@ThymeFromti I lost 16 cobs today, so I'm keen to find out how to protect next year's batch. I tried plastic flower pots resting on top of the cobs to stop birds, yet whatever hit them wasn't stopped. I harvested 20 or so and maybe should've ate the rest quicker. I don't have so much bamboo to spare so may scrunch up many layers of chicken wire over cobs next year when they're nearly ripe.
Sorry to hear you lost 16 cobs in a day, I know how heart breaking that can be. There have been times when bird wire has worked well for me but other times when the rats and/or birds have managed to get their noses or beaks through the bird wire (which is much smaller than chicken wire) and spoil the kernels. Also they can attack at the base of the cob and so I made sure the wire netting wrapped the cobs completely. I have thought of wedging in some bamboo (or you could use twigs) to keep the wire away from the cobs but I find working with wire netting more painful for my hands than bamboo. Maybe you can find some rodent mesh that is more well suited or something like metallic mosquito netting. Here in Australia I am fortunate to be able to grow many crops in a season and so I only have to protect 6 to 8 cobs every 2 weeks. I try to make sure they are well fed and watered to reduce the number of cobs to protect.