grasshopper season coming in

I'm outside with a net, trying to kill off 3/4 inch long hoppers before they get bigger.  

I'll dig through the forums later, but in the meantime, is there anything I can do against them at this stage?

my sympathies. when i get them i either have adults looking for mates (one or two) or I have a fleet of juveniles all in a clump (usually they are gorgeous colors, but it's all a ruse, because the little jerks just want to eat all my stuff).
Because they tend to freeze when they're spotted, the juveniles are mostly easily plopped into a jar of soapy water. the adults, I try to snip in half with a scissor (my space is limited and this is not as horribly hard as it sounds).

I think if you're not having regular rain you could try the usual stinky sprays (onion/garlic or vinegar-based) and harrassment, but I think that might be all hope and no data.

I have thousands of itty ones, growing up fast :P

Sounds like a job for poultry!

William Bronson wrote:Sounds like a job for poultry!

I know... I'm debating borrowing some birds, BUT I have no coop etc any more, AND I lost most of my birds to hawks, in this yard.  

William Bronson wrote:Sounds like a job for poultry!

Here typically chickens do a poor job of protecting stuff because of too many grasshoppers combined with the chickens seeking shelter in the shade from the heat in the hottest part of the day while the grasshoppers are most active.  

There is a parasite called hairworm. If a grasshopper is infected, the parasite will cause the grasshopper to jump into water and drown which makes them easy to catch.

With that size I am only aware of one permies compatible answer that may help.  Go catch about a cup of grasshoppers.(yes I said a cup)  Put them in the blender with a pint or 2 of water and puree it.  Strain any big pieces out while pouring into another container.  Put the liquid in a sprayer with a couple of gallons of water well mixed.(some directions say this needs to NOT be tap water with chlorine or chloramines in it)  Spray the crop trying to cover every surface.  If it isn't washed off by rain it will typically give about 3 days to a week of reduced grasshoppers at which point you gather more grasshoppers and make a new batch and spray again.

Now there seems to be disagreement on why it works.  Some people say the smell simply repels grasshoppers because of all the death of their own.  Others say you are concentrating disease organisms and actually causing them to die when they eat the plant.  I am inclined to go with the first one because you notice reduced counts within about 4 hours usually(faster than I would expect disease deaths) and because while doing it I have never seen dead bodies in any quantity.  It has never cured the problem but it has greatly reduced damage in localized areas sprayed.  No idea if it would work in a field size area.  All we ever did was a mid size garden and a few small trees.

If you are catching them by hand this is a major under taking but if you are using a butterfly or sweep net to gather them when populations are high you can usually get your cup in 10 or 15 minutes effort.  Another half hour to hour to blend, strain and spray and it can be done fairly efficiently with the right tools.  We often took my heavy sweep net into a nearby field with consistent crop height to sweep simply for the speed of gathering the cup worth.

Yeah, installing a new creature into your ecosystem is a big lift.
Muscovy and guineas are said to be avid bug eaters, but either are liable to be hawk food.
Geese are strong against predators, but not much on eating bugs.
Turkey maybe?

There is a different  biological control, wheat bran inoculated with Nosema locustae, which is a disease organism specific to grasshoppers and their kin.

Also, Canola oil is apparently an attractant for them.
It evidently mimics  the kairomones (pheromones' that attract predators) that cue grasshopper cannibalism.

C. Letellier wrote: Now there seems to be disagreement on why it works.  Some people say the smell simply repels grasshoppers because of all the death of their own.

SO far today I didn't catch anywhere near that many.  I lost the fight...
BUT! All I did net got squished and dropped, to leave the death smell for the others. It must have smelled like something, it attracted wasps!

Saw on one of the old hopper threads that wasps will eat small hoppers, my making wasp habitat is paying off, they are killing off my cabbage moths. I'm hoping they do extensive damage to the hopper population.  :D

William Bronson wrote:
There is a different  biological control, wheat bran inoculated with Nosema locustae, which is a disease organism specific to grasshoppers and their kin.

The company that makes it is having supply chain issues and says to check back in 2023  :P
Not sure if any other places make it, all I saw was people who sell that brand saying it was out of stock, and the company apologizing.

Also, Canola oil is apparently an attractant for them.
It evidently mimics  the kairomones (pheromones' that attract predators) that cue grasshopper cannibalism.

Wouldn't surprise me, I don't consider canola oil food and don't stock it. Not sure I want it in my garden, I consider it a toxin.


I also hit in an old thread about yellow attracting them, and them drowning in water in pools. So I sprayed a kiddie pool bright yellow and filled it with water. If nothing else the wasps looked pretty happy about it. We have drought going on.

As far as birds of any sort, they would be borrowed, I'm not going to deal with poultry right now, health stuff is spreading me way too thin as is, can't handle anything else that needs attention. Ask my house plants and cat about that, they'll tell you tales!  And I don't want to put borrowed birds in this yard where the hawks are known to kill chickens. There's not good cover for them to dive for, and they evaporate up into the sky.  :(


Keep suggestions coming!

Diatomaceous earth has a texture similar to powdered sugar.  I have had good results using a mesh strainer to dust it on plants.  Can you get close enough to drop it directly on the hoppers?  I don't know how evasive they are but if this works you could still gather carcasses for the repellent to use against new invaders

We use traps like this, some purchased, some home-made.



(source: farm-naked.com/hopper-stopper)


Then we make grasshopper garum, using the method from the NOMA guide to fermentation.Then we put it on everything, because it is the secret sauce that makes everything awesome.

I think I understand how those are made. Looks like if you use an inverted funnel to close off the bottom of a container the hoppers climb right up that pole and get stuck.  Is having the top be breathable (mesh, basket or the like) matter when you make one, or would the climb into tin cans and Mason jars just as easily?

Do they kill any big plants or just the smaller ones? I have enough grasshoppers that a swarm of them go hopping in every direction as I walk around, but they don't seem to eat big plants. I've just decided anything small enough at this point in the year to get destroyed doesn't have a place in my garden.

Casie Becker wrote:I think I understand how those are made. Looks like if you use an inverted funnel to close off the bottom of a container the hoppers climb right up that pole and get stuck.  Is having the top be breathable (mesh, basket or the like) matter when you make one, or would the climb into tin cans and Mason jars just as easily?

I've only used hardware cloth, so I can't comment on glass or other materials.  You have the idea right, though. Essentially, you're making an inverted funnel in an enclosed cylinder. It sits atop a stake or rod, which protrudes through the funnel.  The grasshoppers climb the vertical rod (as is their wont) and get caught after attempting to leap from the top.

Interesting concept Beau! thank you!! I can work with that.... that one makes sense to my head.

Cassie: I think it would have to be something that looks to them like they can jump onto the plants. Hardware cloth would let them see their target, so they'd jump. A can would block their view, doesn't look like there's something tasty up that stalk. They go up stalks to get to the tasty stuff.

My take on it, I think after thinking on it for a few minutes, would be be make the posts out of something natural feeling like a branch or vines, even if you have to make the actual support posts out of something tougher. Have multiple funnels going into a horizontal good sized cylinder, each with a stalk going up into it, probably angled rather than straight vertical. That would make it more what I need, not to protect one plant, but to protect a block of them, leaving the hardware cloth in bigger pieces to make it easier to work with and reuse later.  Hm! Will think on that and see if I have any hardware cloth left or need to buy some.

Thank you! That idea makes sense to me.  :D

I don't know if this helps any, but my mom looked at the pictured hopper stopper an first thought it was something homemade using canning rings.  

I might consider testing concept on a small with some kind of mesh or net bag.  Most of us who can have extra rings so it would be a cheap experiment and if successful would be easy to mass produce. Even a loose weave burlap though the softer the material the fast a grasshopper would chew its way out.

If I find time before work tomorrow (second job during my usual sleeping hours) I will see if we have anything suitable on hand around the house.

I wonder if screen fabric or tulle would work... Bamboo might work for the stake - even some thicker willow might work...

I had plague levels of grasshoppers for a few years.  Sounds like an exaggeration, but they ate a peach tree….  Stripped it of bark and cambium, just left the inner wood.  They ate the unripe peaches, left only pits hanging from the skeleton of a tree.  It was about 2.5 inch diameter tree.

They did the same to a large lilac bush, ~ 5 feet high, just no peach pits😉, stripped lilac  xylem only.

That’s what I am calling plague levels.  I got guineas and they kept the place pretty clear of grasshoppers.  I had had turkeys before, but they didn’t.  I had eagles , hawks and owls, and did not lose guineas to them, though I know they hunted there.  I had owl(s) pick off my cats, and an eagle almost take my 15 pound dog….

Chickens don’t have as high a protein requirement as guineas and turkeys, consequently, they are as interested in plants and scratching around .

I tried the nolo bait without success.

Grasshoppers are a particular challenge because they’re migratory.  You get rid of all of yours today, and your neighbors’ hoppers arrive tomorrow., in a constant stream.

They’re funny about what they eat too.  I had several colors of monarda, my favorite being the red.  They ate the red ones to nothing, left the pink/lilac ones.

I remember one recommendation from those years, something about leaving an unmowed strip (3’ wide?) around the perimeter of your property, and or as dividers between fields if your property is that large.  It’s supposed to give them a place to hide, and something to eat, and theoretically, it slows the migration, and maybe makes it easier for their predators to find them.

I learned that grasshoppers lay their eggs in loose soil…. And that given equal numbers of grasshopper eggs in the soil, one set of conditions in the spring makes for a huge population.  Can’t remember which enhances the grasshopper hatch, but the 4 possible combinations are cool moist, warm moist, cool dry, warm dry…. And when you have that kind of spring, watch out!

Guessing now:  unlikely to get a strong hatch from cool moist, warm moist might promote mold and fungi, cool dry?  Well, seems the cool would suppress the biological activity in exotherms, and soooo, my GUESS is that the warm dry spring yields the millions…

Before I got the guineas, I used to go out in the late afternoon and hand pick grasshoppers where they gathered on the sunward side of any verticals, wood and stems of sunflowers were body to body in grasshoppers!  I picked them by the bagful and gave them to the chickens.

I don’t miss the grasshopper days!  I don’t know if any of this will be helpful, but good luck!

NoLo bait is not available any longer.  It is only available for a limited time each year and usually not shipped after April.  I concur with the person saying they consider canola oil a toxin.  I would never even consider buying it.  Grasshoppers are the apex predators in the garden, and one of the hardest to control.  There is some research going on using garlic oil sprays (Garlic Barrier is one brand).  It is a repellant/anti-feedant, not a pesticide.  There is a garlic grower near St. Louis trialing a variety of garlic-based applications, including using garlic powder in a duster.  I think the hose-end sprayer versions would be easier to apply, and more economical.

I feel always that in Thailand Grasshoppers should be on the red list of endangered species...

1 US$ the bag of 15, they go well along with beer and fresh fried they smell for me like curry to a p*sshead...

You might have to bite the bullet and let the chickens have at them.

Definitely dry, warm spring. We usually don't have a ton of grasshoppers until August around here, but the plants are big enough then that they are still able to produce well. But not this year! They started hatching two months early in June when a lot of the plants were just getting started. They didn't have a chance.

I am trying a homeopathic approach. I made a tincture of grasshoppers, let it sit for a week, then made a 6X solution that I diluted in a watering can and then watered the plants. I only had to catch about a dozen hoppers to make the tincture. It's still a little too soon to tell, but it appears that the plants that got the remedy are hanging in there and starting to grow, which is almost miraculous given how many hoppers we have this year. At this point my fingers are crossed. Time will tell!

Grasshoppers like it when the weather is dry that is why you always see so many when it is a drought. They lay their eggs and when it is a rainy season the eggs are killed by the moisture due to mold, rot etc.
 So of course watering the soil should help but the problem is you can't water the world in your area and the darn things migrate! When watering watch the grasshoppers flee. Kind of satisfying to give chase to the critters with them running ahead of the water hose. LOL
  A decoy vegetation patch is a great option for them to chow down on. Attracting more wild birds with birdhouses  or maybe watering stations would help. If you can get the guineas to do the job great but sounds like you could have a flock of 20 hungry ones and still have grasshoppers to spare.
   I have heard of the ground up bugs keeping others away. Use a few drops of dishwasher soap to get the liquid to stick to plants if that is your desire. I don't know if you had enough to spray around the area like a fence barrier if that would work. Probably not so more than likely all around the plant targets would be best.
Love
Ranchmama
( with 800 acres we had to pick our battlefields you can only do so much!)[/size[/size]][/size]

We have guinea fowl and they love insects as well as seed.  They will jump to catch grasshoppers.  The only problem is that they are noisy so can easily P off the neighbours.  The up side is that they parade around like a group of little old men out for a stroll.

They are good to warn of intruders, snakes and hawks etc.  They will catch and eat mice.  They roost high up in a tree but will come home for a feed when called.  Though, some will go the wrong way because they have poor vision but great hearing.

The spray of squashed grasshoppers idea is a pheromone which warns others to stay away.  BTW, Pearl, I agree, Canola Oil is not food but it is great to oil up tools and wooden furniture.

Paul Fookes wrote:We have guinea fowl and ……they parade around like a group of little old men out for a stroll…..

LOL, mine reminded me of a gang of thugs, aggressive and cowardly, hanging together in a tight group, attacking the chickens etc.

Quite entertaining to watch, an asset to the property.  I had ~20, and they kept my 2.5 acres clear of grasshoppers, including the constant influx from the surrounding desert and guinea-less properties.  And annoy (some) neighbors with their racket they did!  Though others welcomed them.

They’re the best defense against grasshoppers if  conditions allow, freezing nights kill them, so in hard winter you have to put them in at sundown.

Paula Broadfoot wrote:
I have used minnow traps.

Those looks great!  Seems like you could put a lid on each half and get two out of the set . . .



minnow traps link

I do have to say, I'm not sure these traps will put a big dent in a huge population - but it is a good way to harvest a grasshopper crop, for chicken food or entomophagy.

Grasshoppers make good fish bait. During grasshopper season fish will take grasshoppers as soon as they hit the water. Grasshoppers are good swimmers and can swim to shore quickly if they happen to land on the water.
When fishing in late summer in the streams and rivers of Cache Valley, my kids had nearly as much fun catching the grasshoppers as they did catching fish. They often caught more fish with their willow branch poles, six feet of monofilament line, and a #6 hook baited with a grasshopper than the fly fishermen who were fishing the same waters.
Freezing grasshoppers at home for later use in November and December produced good results too.

I've been here 5 years, and until last year not seen any significant number of grasshoppers.  Last year they ate every single sweet potato leaf off every plant I had growing.  Then they were gone.  It only took them a day or two to strip my sweet potato plants down to stems, which of course didn't survive although one valiantly tried to put out a shoot.

I like the inverted funnel trap idea and will keep that in mind should I have another grasshopper infestation this year or in the future.  

Paul, thanks for mentioning fair moans!!! (I gotta leave this! I love examples of Otto Korrect’s mistakes, and this is a good one. I said “pheromones” of course

I never thought of that and yet it really fits the whole picture of ground grasshoppers being a deterrent to live ones, doesn’t it?

While my first instinct would also be to suggest ducks or guinea fowl, I can totally understand the OP's position that these simple aren't in the cards, at least not this season.

Those inverted cone traps are cool!  I would definitely try those.  They might also produce enough body mass with which to craft your liquified grasshopper repellent spray.

If that doesn't work - or work well enough - the only thing I can think to advise is Orange Oil.

Orange Oil is a brand name for an excellent household degreaser based on d-limonene, the oil extracted from citrus rinds.  It is mostly straight d-limonene (the product says 80-95%, which is a curiously broad range) mixed with a surfactant to make it soluble.  I love having it around the house!  No other natural product I'm aware of takes sticky goo off of a hard surface better.  Think: removing stubborn label adhesive residue from glass bottles.  I used to buy pure, technical grade d-limonene, but the problem with that is that it is not even slightly soluble.  So, you can use pure d-limonene to dissolve the goo from something, but then you need some hard scrubbing with lots of soap to get the d-limonene off!  The Orange Oil is much more practical.

Anyway, I also use it successfully as a non-toxic insecticide against hard-bodied bugs.  In other words, when roaches and crickets invade the home, which they do constantly, I reach for a spray bottle of Orange Oil.  It is my substitute for a can of Raid.  Give them a good spray, making sure to get around and under their wing covers in the case of big roaches (or as we euphemistically call them here in the South, palmetto bugs - they're just giant f*^&ing roaches!), and you've got a sure kill.  I've seen crickets and some roaches collapse within seconds, and I've seen others scurry away, seemingly unaffected.  But they always turn up dead or dying somewhere soon after, often within hours.

You can buy it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Green-Gobbler-All-Natural-Concentrated-Multi-Purpose/dp/B0141AV2FQ/ref=asc_df_B0141AV2FQ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309777800852&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17410097755283013907&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010619&hvtargid=pla-521804248284&psc=1

I suspect spraying Orange Oil on a field full of grasshoppers might quickly become prohibitively expensive.  I suggest experimenting with different dilution rates.  I have no idea how well that might work, as it is beyond my own experience.  But it might work.  Well diluted, you are probably less likely to inflict collateral damage (?) on your crops, as well.

I reach for Orange Oil because I already have it around as a household cleaner.  But there is also a similar product marketed expressly as a non-toxic insecticide:

https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Guard-Home-Control-Gallon/dp/B002OTWTYK/ref=asc_df_B002OTWTYK/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198092304429&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16306773675958350830&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010619&hvtargid=pla-323383501878&psc=1

https://www.fertilizeronline.com/orange-guard-indoor-outdoor.php#:~:text=The%20active%20ingredient%20d%2DLimonene,applied%20directly%2C%20the%20insect%20suffocates.

Perhaps this would be more cost-effective?  I've never looked into it, as I've never tried to apply any d-limonene product in volume as an outdoor insecticide.  Curiously, that is how I first looked into these products - I was intending to fight fire ants. But by the time I actually had the products at my disposal, my property had established beyond the point of fire ant infestation.  Fire ants prefer poor and disturbed soils.

I note that these sites read "The active ingredient d-Limonene (orange peel extract) destroys the wax coating of the insect's respiratory system.  When applied directly, the insect suffocates."  But it also indicates that the Orange Guard product is an aqueous solution.  So this might give credence to the idea of spraying diluted Orange Oil as well.

I'll post pics of the trap I just made and installed in a while, dinner is cooking.

I stock orange oil too... Great idea!I think somewhere in my head I knew it took down bugs. I had forgotten. Thank you :D

D-limonene can also be extracted into plain ol' white vinegar, very easily. Drop orange peels into the vinegar, and let it sit a couple weeks. To make the spray, add a little dish soap, shake, and load into your sprayer...

I did a little bit more research and found this:

https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/broadleaf-weeds/

It includes at the end a list of herbicides based on natural compounds.  These are all contact herbicides - or "burn-down herbicides," as the article states it - as opposed to systemic herbicides.  This means they won't poison your garden, but it also means that after the green matter you have "burned" by coating in herbicide has died back, the weed may resprout from the stem or roots.  Frequent re-application may be necessary until the whole plant has succumbed.

Anyway, among these natural herbicides are:

  Examples of orange oil (d-limonene) based herbicides include:
  Avenger AG Burndown Herbicide (55% d-limonene) (OMRI)
  Worry Free Weed and Grass Killer (70% d-limonene) (OMRI)

I note that the product instructions for Avenger AG indicate that the product is actually a concentrate, intended for 1:3 or up to 1:6 dilution.

Therefore, I would be cautious in my application of a d-limonene based insecticide.  Don't spray it willy-nilly, or you might damage your crops as well as your pests!

Hopper cage 1
The fake flowers are to entice them upward, old threads on hoppers say they are attracted to yellow.

Matthew Nistico wrote:Therefore, I would be cautious in my application of a d-limonene based insecticide.  Don't spray it willy-nilly, or you might damage your crops as well as your pests!

Then again, based on the severity of your grasshopper infestation, the risk might be worth it.

Sorry to hear about what you are experiencing.  

The suggestions posted for grasshoppers are all good, depending on the amount of grasshoppers in your garden.
Try as many as is cost/time effective.

Spring of 2020 we experienced a 'plague' of locusts emerging from the rangeland/pasture/fields behind our home.  
Wet winter and warm spring weather. we were informed that this happens every 12-15 years according to the neighbors who have lived in this area over 30 years.

Unfortunately nothing we tried and was recommended by entomologists worked.  there were too many locusts covering every part of the garden/yard/plants and house.

-Diatomaceous earth etc. to Nolo and finally wheat bran inoculated with Nosema locustae, which is a disease organism specific to grasshoppers and their kin.
once they become locusts they feast on each other as well as all the plants in the garden/yard.  
(wide low jars/containers of soapy water does attract them easy to dispose of depending on how many you use)

The pool/pool pump was ruined by the sheer volume of locust bodies. as they dove into the pool, every 24 hours we would clear out the filter and gather a large bushel bucket filled with dead locusts, we spread them out in the garden/yard.  nothing wasted.
A year later we had/still have a beautiful pond.  

Our garden/yard looked like it had been through a 'fire' every plant/vegetable/herbs/flowers and shorter fruit trees were stripped/eaten.
A year later the garden came back to life, we did need to replace some fruit trees and plants that did not survive.
The dead locusts provided nutrition to the soil and plants.

I can't imagine having a couple or more acres of crops ruined by locusts.
(I was in contact with several people throughout the country who were experiencing hordes of locusts on their farmlands that spring/summer)

In the end a good old fly swatter and an hour of swatting them on the house every evening was good therapy for my frustration.