Cathy Isom has a few interesting tips about getting rid of grasshoppers in your garden the organic way. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Grasshoppers can be a gardening nightmare. Fortunately, there are natural ways to deter them, or reduce their numbers considerably. These insects do not discriminate, grasshoppers will eat almost anything in your yard and garden. They prefer cereal grains like clover, oats, wheat, corn, rye and barley. But they’ll cheerfully settle for your grass, flowers, greens, beans, and broccoli as well. Most grasshoppers will avoid eating cilantro, squash, peas, and tomato leaves.
No single method is 100% effective, but if you attack in two or three distinct ways, you can defeat them. Start out by making your garden less attractive to hungry young hoppers. Plant repellent flowers like moss roses, lilacs, forsythia, sage, and jasmine. Mixing less-desirable plants into your garden will make it less of an ideal habitat for these invaders. Letting your lawn grass grow tall is another way of luring grasshoppers away.
If you have chickens, they will eat grasshoppers throughout their life cycle. Some effective sprays will do the trick too, such as Neem or a highly concentrated garlic spray. Flour dust is also an effective ways to fight an active infestation of grasshoppers. Grab a fluffy paint brush or a makeup brush and a jar of flour, and start painting your plants’ leaves. You don’t need a lot of flour—just a light dusting is enough. Apply in dry weather, and watch your grasshopper population start to die.
I’m Cathy Isom…