Bird
Epic Contributor
Unfortunately, there is really no practical way to control grasshoppers apparently. Our county agent has a regular column in the local newspaper and last year, he described a number of concoctions for killing them, but the bottom line was that you can kill the ones you apply it directly to but there'll be a new bunch back tomorrow.
And while I make no pretenses of being a genuine "organic" gardener, I don't use any chemicals or insecticides on my vegetable garden. I figure seed's cheap; plant enough for us, family, neighbors, and the bugs. Hopefully, it'll be like last year; they destroyed the garden early, but by that time my wife had canned 19 cases of vegetables and filled both freezers, in addition to what we gave everyone else.
And Mark, I've just got a little 50' long by about 4' wide strip of blackberries in the back yard, separate from the garden. And I learned from the county agent that there are several varieties of domestic blackberries, and I don't even know which variety I have. We have quite a few of the wild ones along the road and on the Corp of Engineers property around the lake that anyone can pick, but the ones in my yard make berries that are two to three times as big as the wild ones, and it seems, to me at least, a little juicier. I usually get about 50 quarts a year off my little patch, and they'll be through producing about the middle of June. They would probably produce a lot more if I hand pruned them after they quit producing, but I've never done that; I just mow them down with the brush hog, then apply a granular fertilizer, and water it in.
Bird
And while I make no pretenses of being a genuine "organic" gardener, I don't use any chemicals or insecticides on my vegetable garden. I figure seed's cheap; plant enough for us, family, neighbors, and the bugs. Hopefully, it'll be like last year; they destroyed the garden early, but by that time my wife had canned 19 cases of vegetables and filled both freezers, in addition to what we gave everyone else.
And Mark, I've just got a little 50' long by about 4' wide strip of blackberries in the back yard, separate from the garden. And I learned from the county agent that there are several varieties of domestic blackberries, and I don't even know which variety I have. We have quite a few of the wild ones along the road and on the Corp of Engineers property around the lake that anyone can pick, but the ones in my yard make berries that are two to three times as big as the wild ones, and it seems, to me at least, a little juicier. I usually get about 50 quarts a year off my little patch, and they'll be through producing about the middle of June. They would probably produce a lot more if I hand pruned them after they quit producing, but I've never done that; I just mow them down with the brush hog, then apply a granular fertilizer, and water it in.
Bird
