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Detroit is an urban environment and has a need to limit the impact of rats. With ordinances and serious fines against maintaining unlicensed dumps and rat harborage threatening, how can you rat -and ‘rat-fink’ – proof your compost pile?
Cleanliness
The first issue is general cleanliness. Keep your compost area looking as spiffy as you can. While the police haven’t time to patrol the alleys and backyards looking for problems, the environmental officer in your local precinct will ‘make’ time to respond to the complaint of a neighbor. Rats will treat spillage like the free banquet that it is. And the officer will treat a violation like the chance to write a ticket that it is.
Appearance
Make certain that any structures, such as bins, boxes, lean-to’s and so on are at least upright and look like they are being maintained. Look at them from off your property so as to see them as your neighbors do. It’s a $300 fine and a trip downtown if you are cited; so a little extra effort here is probably warranted.
Construction
Make certain that your compost pile has a solid bottom. As it happens, a former owner of my house paved the area behind my garage so my compost piles sit on concrete. At the very least put a doubled layer of 1/2” hardware cloth underneath your pile. You need to convince the officer / judge that rodents cannot tunnel up (and undetected) from beneath. Earthworms will still be able to come through the mesh, so all is not lost.
With the concrete as a base, I set my bins atop hardware cloth stapled to a grid of 2×2’s. I’m not certain how they do it, but the earthworms still manage to find their way in. When I empty a pile and lift the grid, I always find loads of worms and a bushel or more of castings.
Methodology
Your arsenal may also include your choice of composting methods. That is, some methods are less prone to rat infestation than others.
While almost anything, including grease, meats and manures, will compost, it is often the course of wisdom to consign these to your curbside trash container or to an indoor vermicomposting box. The interior of a ‘hot’ compost pile will often approach 200 degrees F. but sometimes this “rat bait” ends up nearer the outside of the pile where temperatures are considerably lower. Although a rat won’t enter the depths of a hot pile, the same cannot be said for its cooler edges.
In conclusion
There are other means of composting, including in-ground, anaerobic and vermiculture methods, which I’ll discuss in future posts, but these don’t attract the attention of either rats or people like above-ground enclosures do.
Be safe. Have fun. Eat well. – Bill
