Hill Gardens of Maine - Dealing With Grasshoppers

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GRASSHOPPERS!
Another Late Summer Scourge!
by Fred Davis, MG, Hill Gardens of Maine (To view other previous articles, click Archives)

Welcome through Fred's Garden Gate! What a year for grasshoppers! They’re everywhere…and they’re munching holes in practically everything in sight. In our gardens, they seem to have a preference for foxgloves and certain varieties of hosta but, annoyingly enough, have sampled leaves of very nearly every variety of annual, perennial and vegetable we’ve attempted to grow. If you’ve been ‘plagued’ by winged grasshoppers this year, too, read on. We’ll see if we can shed a little light on what they’re all about, what makes them ‘tick’, and see if we can figure some way of dealing with them.

Grasshoppers hatch during mid-Spring from egg masses placed in the ground the previous fall by an adult. Tiny ‘nymphs’, as they are called immediately after hatching, rapidly progress through six stages of development called ‘instar’ and finally arrive at the full, one-inch to two-and-a-half-inch winged adults which every gardener and child are familiar with. And there are LOTS of them! Each mature female can produce as many as a whopping 25 separate masses of 120 eggs in each! Masses over-winter in the ground and are not normally effected by abrupt or disagreeable atmospheric conditions.

After they hatch, however, weather plays a significant role in grasshopper development as well as the economic damage they can cause. According to Entomologists Phillip Glogoza and Michael Weiss at the North Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service, a warm, early Spring encourages a premature hatch. If followed by a cold snap, development is greatly hampered. A hot period in early spring promotes hatching but, if followed by cloudy, wet weather, conditions are in place for the occurrence of fungal diseases which can devastate insect populations.

Our Spring started out early and warm. There was no significant cold snap, just as there were no cloudy, wet spells to affect grasshopper numbers. So…now a great many of the little buggers are selfishly chewing our gardens to tatters! To make matters worse, a warm Summer and, quite possibly, an extended Fall will set up the perfect conditions for maximum reproduction for next years’ problems.

Wow! So…what do we do? Unfortunately, winged adults with the greatest appetites and egg-production capacity can travel great distances in a short time. Whatever you do in your garden will almost surely be diminished by the uncontrolled hoards of grasshoppers flying in from the woods, fields or your neighbor’s garden.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to hand-picking and decapitating. Better: enlist the aid of your kids or grandchildren who delight in capturing the hoppity-critters to feed our many frogs, toads, and small snakes.

Most of the established and reliable farm ‘n garden stores have a natural insecticide called Pyrethrum (smushed-up and liquefied painted daisies) which you can mix with water and spray around. It’s highly effective and, best of all, is not one of those exquisitely-dangerous poisons so readily available these days. (I still shudder every time I think of the recent widely-broadcast TV commercial for chemical pesticides: "I don’t know what’s in it…I just know that it works…so I use it.")

Very moist conditions in the garden during the Summer tends to encourage the development of a fungus which attacks, infects and destroys virtually any stage of grasshopper development. I’ve noticed that in parts of our gardens where I maintain moisture by sprinklers (the shady hosta garden, for example) there are no grasshoppers and no signs of damage. ‘Hoppers tend to congregate out in the open where it’s hot, dry and sunny. So maybe us shady gardeners have the advantage.

Just be persistent; capture and destroy every adult you find in your garden…before they have a chance to lay upwards of 5,000 eggs – each. And hope that your neighbor does the same. Sounds like a great method for controlling Japanese Beetles, too!

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