Oh, for the love of... What's with these GRASSHOPPERS?

Forget about the Japanese beetles, my garden seems to be infested with tiny grasshoppers! They've eaten pretty much all the leaves off my salvia, so I ended up skipping the rebloom I could've had with it and cut it down nearly to the ground. Now they're focused on another area of the yard that I'm not so worried about (it's just a weedy patch), but I'm afraid they'll come back.

Will insecticidal soap work on these guys? Or is there anything I can do to prevent them? When they swarm in and attack a plant, they pretty much destroy it in 24 hours...no lie. :(

I'm not sure what works on them, but insecticidal soap is typically only effective on soft bodied insects so I suspect you'll need something stronger.

Semaspore bait has worked great for me and several others i've talked to.


http://www.planetnatural.com/site/semaspore-grasshopper-bait.html

Thanks, upforachallenge! That looks like just the trick. Grim description of how it works, but...as long as it's safe and it does work, I'm all for it.

I hate grasshoppers too,,, but I wonder if that stuff is good in the long run,, I mean over a long period of time,, There little devils, but they must be here for a reason!! If we kill all of them, which is what that stuff sort of sounds like it could do, then will we have something worse because we dont have the grasshoppers. I hope that makes sence! I'm a little tired. MeganO

I doubt you'd kill enough of them to have a severe negative impact. Grasshoppers are eaten by some wildlife, but those wildlife also eat other things besides grasshoppers, and the semaspore just kills grasshoppers but not other things, so I think all in all there's much more up side than down side to using it to help control them.

Your probably right , I was just thinking of how many there are around me. I live in a spot with 3 sides being a cow pasture and the other side a woods, and I watch the wild turkeys go through every afternoon muching on grasshoppers and some sort of black bird here likes them. I'm happy they get them before they get all of my stuff.

We've had a bumper crop of grasshoppers this year as well. And Japanese beetles. And leafhoppers. And mites. And mosquitoes. But then, we had pretty much a month of 6" of snow every 3-4 days with melting in between, so the ground was sodden for a large portion of the winter.
It does sound cool, though. And it's not as gross as the 17-year cicada invasion of last summer!

The cicadas were deafening at my house last year. I had a quite a few this year but it was a dull roar compared to last year.

The baby grasshoppers ate my Datura but it came back and they have eaten parts of all of my Siberian Iris.

The grasshoppers are showing up here too. The little ones are on the trails in the community, but the big honking disgusting green ones are showing up in the yard.

On a happier note, we are seeing kaydids in pairs, lots of butterflies and the occasional preying mantis.

Donna

Hey- I saw my first praying mantis this year! What's more, he's in my greenhouse! (I just decided he's a he, and I named him Bertram).

I haven't noticed any damage from grasshoppers, though.

The cicadas blew my ears out as well, and did MAJOR damage to my woodies . Lots of leftover, confused cicadas this year, along with the usual yearly, 3-year, 7-year, etc.

Lots of butterflies here as well, and a ton of bees.

Plantaholic, that's interesting. North of you in Lake County we have fewer mature trees, so we had vitually no cicadas last year. But this year, we have two or three that scream at us for several hours in the evening. My husband bats our linden with a bamboo pole and it flies to the other linden. Bat that and it flies to the cherry. Go after it there and it goes to the crabapple. Gross.

But the bees are GREAT. We have everything from tiny ones that look like honeybees to the biggest bumblebees I've ever seen. They are all very mildmannered. I can deadhead stuff right next to them and they don't mind.

Are you experiencing a pleasant absence of yellowjackets? And the paper wasps did almost no nestbuilding.

But where are the ladybugs? We got almost none last year and have seen very few this year.

Will your woodies be OK?

Donna

Donna-
The only ladybugs I've seen were the larvae in a water garden tank that I forgot to nab with mosquito dunks, so they were very well fed! Didn't see the adults, though.

All sorts of bees here, as well, and tons of carpenter bees! There was one last year, determined to make a nest in my fence, who I dissuaded. I only saw one nest in process waaaay up on the top of my cedar roof, but because of my yellow jacket problem, I actually have my house sprayed for buzzers to keep them from nesting. It does make a difference, so worth the $ to me. I do have paper wasps. They spend all day scraping the silver top layer of my teak patio chairs to make nests.

The cicada infestation last year was incredible. The sound was eery, like a spaceship landing off in the distance! I had a Donald Wyman crabapple next to my patio that was literally buzzing just from those boogers working their wings.

My woodies are fine, it's just that I planted most of them the fall before, not knowing about the impending invasion. Since they were still in shock from planting, very few could really recover from the cicada wounds. In fact, I forced the jerk who sold me most of the plants to replace several, including the Donald Wyman, since they were so reduced in size and/or disfigured by the damage. He admitted that he knew about it, had to replace trees 17 years ago, yadda yadda, but didn't want to replace any of mine. His crew refused to wrap trees, gave me grief for making them do it, and the head of the crew ended up screaming at me for 20 minutes because of it. So, I still get anxious whenever I hear that buzz!

Fortunately, the cicadas this year are sticking to the older, taller trees, so it's not been too stressful. But, if I find one on any of my plants, they get a powerful shot of water!

Interestingly enough, the trees I worried about most were my Japanese maples, and yet they healed their wounds in 10 days or less! Far tougher plants than I reckoned. The dogwoods got pummeled, though.

Meegan

Meegan,

I'm glad to hear that you got the creep to replace them. They were talking about the cicadas years ago. He must have known what could happen.

Honestly, I don't know how you endured it. We have THREE cicadas, and they make my hubbie crazy.

The only damage I have other than the billion Japanese beetles (we just put down Milky Spore) was from the cutter bees that love one rose in particular. But the damage from cutter bees is cosmetic. Some of my neighbors have trees so devastated by JBs that they probably won't survive the winter - they lost that much of the foliage.

The paper wasps made me nervous after an incident three years ago. We have a cedar deck with cedar railings. Unbeknownst to me, a nest was built under and between railings, where my morning glories were growing. I start to tend to the flowers when I hear a terrible buzzing noise. I took off, but at ten feet away a couple of them caught up with me and went for the left side of my face. Fortunately I raised my hand to protect my face and got two stings on my hand. WOW! Did it hurt!!!! So we are a little nervous about them.

All in all, a very strange year. Thanks for sharing your experiences with me. (I LOVE Winnetka! Enjoy taking Sheridan Road north from the city just to enjoy the beauty of where you live).

Donna