Rats, Plan A revisited.

Plan A for rat control is a metal barrier all the way around the greenhouse, deep enough so they won't dig under it, and tall enough to discourage them from climbing to the top and chewing throught the plastic.  I got this task done on three sides several years ago, but never got that last side done.  Tonight, it's done.

I lifted up the plastic on the east side and stapled it temporarily to keep it out of my way.  The board on the ground was holding the plastic down, but clearly not keeping things out.

In the center of the wall, where two baseboards meet, there was a clear hole where they'd been going in and out.  To the right of that was more area that they could get through easily.  And at each corner there was a spot where they'd obviously been moving through.

I dug along with a square point spade.  It was easy enough until I got to the last three feet.  There, the soil was frozen.  So I got the mattock.

That seemed to be working fine, until my poor care of it came back to bite me and the handle split.

Luckily, we seem to stock hockey tape.  Pink seemed like a good color for something I didn't want to keep leaving out.  I don't know how long it will last, but I noticed later that I have a spare handle in the shop.  So, back to digging.

Here you see the northeast corner, not quite fully excavated.  The rats went in and out to the left of the foundation post.  To the right of it you can see the 1" blue foam, the greenhouse plastic coming down outside of that, the sheet metal outside of that, and then the corrugated drain line, which, if connected to a ditch that isn't filled in, will drain water away from the north side.

In the trench I noticed this hole going into the soil under the greenhouse.  I should do some cleaning and cultivating inside.

Here's the ditch all dug out.  It's about 14" below the bottom of the bottom board.

16" tall, 8' long, 1" thick blue expanded polystyrene placed in the ditch.  I had to add a scrap of 2" at the north end.  Apparently, where the foam is, the greenhouse is just a little over 16' wide.

Then I tuck the plastic down over the foam as neatly as I can.

This is old metal roofing from a mobile home that I got off the metal pile at the dump several years ago.  It's beat up, but it's galvanized and 30" wide.  They're not quite 10' long, which is plenty to cover the foam.

And here they are fit into the trench.  I bent the ends over slightly to make rat proof corners.  You can also see that before I backfilled, I took a length of that drain line and put it in the bottom of the ditch.  The circle of the opening is down there at the corner.  I should probably cover that with hardware cloth, and backfill the whole area with loose stone.

I looked around and found the southwest corner is a little loose too.  I'll need to move some debris out of the way, dig it out, and put a folded 90° piece of metal around the corner, but for the moment, I've got a handleless shovel blade in front of the hole, so the whole thing should be tight now.  Next I need to clean out inside and make sure there aren't any still hiding in there.