Garden Pests and Diseases: No more voles - Mole Crickets!!, 1 by mygardens

mygardens wrote:
In 2006 I made a plea for an organic method of getting rid of voles. For anyone interested in a long story, the thread started at http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=2555288 . In 2007 I updated our progress at http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/740278/ .

This year, having licked the vole problem, we now find that we have something that appears to be even more difficult to solve... Mole Crickets! Our local Cornell Extension agent says these are very rare in our area, but according to what we have found, it looks as if this could become a more wide-spread problem very quickly.

We were very disappointed this year, to find many small holes and find that our early vegetables were being eaten at the roots and dying. No voles were in our traps but one day we found a large dead bug that we identified as a Mole Cricket. I uploaded a photo to the Bug Forum at http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/848821/ , but thought it might generate more information in this forum. As seen in the photo, they have very large claws and the holes are about one inch wide.

On a daily basis we have now been digging up parts of the garden, removing about 10 crickets a day, and according to http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/lh039, they lay "pockets of about 25-60 eggs...Females may lay up to 5 clutches of eggs before dying" as seen in this photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MoleCricketLyd.png . For every one we find, I am sure there are 10 more, so digging is no solution. Apparently they fly once or twice a year, so all our netting and fencing will not keep them out.

Hopefully there is someone reading DG who can help, but maybe there is just no organic solution and we will have to give up our 20 x 30 vegetable garden for a few tomatoes grown in containers.