Weird, I see a comment in my email but its not showing up here.

I do have 2 cats but they are indoor cats and the one rat that was in the house my younger cat was trying to play with her. It was our Chihuahua-Terrier mix who caught and killed it (after I tried unsuccessfully to capture the darn thing). Plus I heard the rats eating my corn right outside my window at night so I'd need a cat to go sleep in my garden to be effective. I'd love to get a falcon though :)

Honestly if rats are prolific in your surrounding area then there is no way to not attract them or to keep them out of the garden. Even the smallest hole fencing won't work for them except for hardware cloth. The solution is to reduce the area wide population and that requires the use of exterminators, poison baits, etc. - not something we want near the garden - so we do the surrounds. Might be worth consulting an exterminator for advice specific to your area.

Specific crops don't make a difference over all - they will eat whatever is available so if it isn't the watermelon it will be another crop.

I live far out in the country in heavily wooded area and have a chronic problem with pack rats. So I have to heavily treat the surrounding area to control the population. That means baits in the barns and sheds, under the auto hoods and anywhere else they can seek shelter or nest. Also have to keep the area around the gardens well-cleared of any debris, keep the compost bins far away from the gardens, and use 1/2" hardware cloth to block access to thing I want protected.

Dave

You can protect developing watermelon fruits by caging them with wire netting.

Is your area home to at least one species of nonvenemous snake that feeds mainly on rodents? If you cannot avoid attracting rats, you may be able to attract snakes to control the rats. Build a brush pile or other suitable habitat for the snakes to live in. Provide water; a wide, shallow saucer with a mosquito dunk under a rock works fine. Stay out of the veggie garden area when snakes are most active, usually from dusk to dawn, not only for your safety, but also because snakes are terrified of humans.

If someone had suggested this approach to me 15 years ago, I would have called the men in white coats. Now I can testify that inviting snakes to patrol the garden significantly reduces the level of rodent activity. Rats steal our food and carry diseases. Snakes do neither.

Wow cool! I'm going to try that!! We do have a large rabbit that lives in the neighbours backyard so not sure if that will bother the snakes or the snakes bother it but I'd love to get rid of any rodents! I know as kids we'd find Garter snakes in town so there are no local variety of venomous snakes. We have a wooded area half a block away so hopefully they'll come over and settle down.

Actually I Googled and found Ontario does have a rattlesnake but its farther north of where I live. Interesting to know. I'm not fond of snakes but not afraid or disgusted by them so I don't mind having them around but I do have a small dog that likes to kill things. Is there something I can do to protect the snakes?

In southern Ontario your most suitable candidate may be the eastern milk snake. It's docile and often found on farms, which suggests it copes well with human neighbors. The black rat and eastern fox snakes also eat rodents, but they are listed as threatened in Ontario. Garter snakes may need more water than a home gardener can provide; they'll eat rodents but prefer worms and frogs.

Would a milk snake be desperate enough to take on a large, domesticated rabbit? Only if it could extend its jaws around it. Why take that risk when smaller rodents are available?

The best thing we can do to protect snakes from our dogs is give them a dense brush pile where they can hide from predators. If only that could prevent all dog-meet-snake events. Last summer I let my younger German shepherd out just as a rat snake was headed toward the cherry tomato patch. The dog saw the snake before I did, dashed over and picked it up. To the dog's credit, he released the snake when I said, "Leave it." The snake escaped. Whether it survived the trauma, I have no way of knowing.