They say this year is shaping up to be a bad year for grasshoppers…
Cool, rainy summers cause many grasshoppers to fall to disease, but hot, dry weather causes a boom.
— Baby grasshoppers hatch in spring/early summer from eggs just under the soil. Young hoppers live in dense vegetation, which is also home to their predators (spiders, ground beetles, frogs, etc.). Therefore, areas of dense, mixed herbs, grasses, and flowers located near your garden might serve as an early-season trap.
— Attract insect-eating birds, by providing trellises, posts, etc. to act as perches. Chickens, ducks, guineas, and other fowl love to eat grasshoppers, but be careful because they might also like to eat your garden plants. Using movable pens for fowl around your garden, if possible, could be effective.
— Use row covers (floating row covers, lightweight cloth, etc.) over your plants. Be sure to hold the cloth above the plants with hoops or stakes.
— Grasshoppers like tall grass, so try to keep your garden weeded and maybe let a stand of tall grass grow up near the edge of your garden in late summer. — If the grasshoppers become too much of a problem, using a biological method might be necessary. Nosema locustae, a naturally occurring fungus, is sold as Nolo Bait or Semaspore, and when ingested by grasshoppers will kill them. Please note that Nosema locustae is also harmful to crickets (which eat weed seeds) and mantids (which eat other bugs), so you’ll have to decide if you want to make the trade-off.
Taken/paraphrased from Mother Earth News, Vol. 6, Spring 2010
