Spring signals the start of breeding season for numerous rats, meaning you're more likely to encounter these unwelcome visitors around your garden and possibly your home. The very thought of rats entering your property is sufficient to make anyone recoil, yet in most instances, they can be prevented.

Celebrated gardening expert Monty Don has emphasised that compost is the principal element attracting rats to your garden. While composting is an excellent approach for discarding kitchen waste and enriching your garden, the horticultural authority warned that you must be discerning about what you place in your compost heap. Monty said: "The real secret of compost is life to soil.

"Because compost is made by the material being digested by bacteria and fungi and nematodes and the worms and beetles and bugs, you make it work like a recipe that you know just works and works over time

"So let's look at it like a recipe. First thing is your ingredients. You can add almost anything that's lived to a compost heap."

Nevertheless, his composting guidance comes with one crucial warning, reports the Mirror.

"Don't add meat, fats or cooked material," he said. "Particularly cooked starches like potato or rice or pasta."

He warned: "The main reason for that is not that it won't decompose, because it will in time, but it will do so more slowly. It will attract rodents. You will get rats."

These food products typically decompose at an exceptionally sluggish rate, generate foul odours, and can draw numerous varieties of rodents.

Television gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh also emphasised that rats are especially drawn to compost.

He explained: "The place they love more than anywhere else in the garden is the compost heap. Mainly because of the heat generated by all this rotting vegetation."

He further cautioned gardeners against introducing fats, cooked materials and meat to compost.

Alan warned: "Don't put processed food, anything you have cooked, any meat, or any potatoes. Don't do that because it's just an absolute open invitation for rats."