If your vegetable garden area is surrounded by grass, your crops may get visitors: pesky grasshoppers. If grasshoppers make their way to your vegetable plants, you’ll begin to notice holes in your crops’ leaves and partially eaten produce. If very large numbers of these common garden pests are present, they can do serious damage and you may lose your entire harvest to grasshoppers.
How can you get control of grasshoppers and protect your crops from these insects of mass destruction? The good news is there are natural methods and organic pest control methods to help protect your crops, especially those vegetables grasshoppers are most fond of: lettuce, carrots, beans, sweet corn, and onions. You need not focus your grasshopper control efforts as much on squash, peas, and tomatoes.
Introduce or encourage natural predators
A great way to control a grasshopper problem is by making them a food source for others. In particular, chickens, turkeys, guinea hens, and ducks love to eat grasshoppers. If you don’t have, or want these types of animals, use bird feeders to lure larks, bluebirds, or kestrels to the area of grasshopper infestation so they can help you reduce the grasshopper population. Don’t forget that grasshoppers are perfect toys for roaming cats.
Soil care
There are preventative measures you can take as well. Tilling your soil in autumn may help expose grasshopper eggs. For best results till again the following spring for weed prevention since grasshoppers love to hide in weeds. You can also introduce living fungi spores of nosema locustae to infect and kill some types of grasshoppers. Further, having biologically active soil encourages the growth of organisms and microorganisms that cause diseases in grasshoppers.
Protect your plants
Grasshoppers typically don’t bother with physical barriers. Row covers made of aluminum window screening or fabric may protect your plants, although some grasshopper species have actually been known to chew through fabric.
Hot pepper wax
Sold as a liquid spray, insects are supposedly repelled by the taste of its active ingredient, cayenne pepper, and will not eat plant leaves. This hot pepper spray is a natural insecticide. Hot pepper wax works on soft bodied insects.
Neem oil
Neem acts in two ways. Its main function is to act as a hormone that causes infected insects to forget to eat. Eventually the insect will die of starvation. So, a vegetable crop leaf covered in Neem oil may still show some damage, but insects that ingest Neem will not be back for more than a few helpings. Neem may also work as simply as a scent repellent.
Nolo bait
Only available in certain states, Nolo Bait is an organic spore that kills both mormon crickets and grasshoppers, and will pass from grasshopper to grasshopper once they are infected.
Provide an attractive habitat
Since grasshoppers love to hide in tall weeds and tall grass, consider providing an area of untamed grass in proximity to your garden to attract grasshoppers. This shelter may provide enough benefit for them to move from your garden plants. If your grasshoppers need encouragement, design a temporary path for their migration.
Carbaryl dust (not organic!)
If you are not wedded to organic pest control, try carbaryl dust or spray. Although it is a potent grasshopper killer, it can be cost prohibitive if used on large gardens or lawns. An average 1000 square foot lawn will need five pounds of carbaryl dust at nearly $20 each. This method is only recommended for the desperate!
Additional resources:
Creative Commons Flickr photo courtesy of Aleksey Gnilenkov
