Grasshoppers & Crickets

W5FL · May 29, 2000

Found a natural product called NOLO BAIT that is to be applied at the rate of 5 tsp/100 sq ft. Comes in 1 lb can and costs about $17. Now that would cover about 2000 sq ft per can or $340 per acre. WOW. Guess I better hope it works for the garden - well maybe for a few rows of corn.....

Unless they sell this stuff in agricultural quantities, it doesn't really matter whether it works or not, it is too costly. Cheaper to let the grass hopper eat everything.

It also works on crickets, which are a real problem here at the fist sign of cool weather - long way off.

Other baits include SEVIN dust mixed with Molasses. Told that it works, but it kills everything else that eats it too...

I have a little boston terrier that kills and eats grass hoppers. He can keep 2000 sq ft clear of grasshoppers, but I would need 200 more terriers to keep the grasshoppers down, and I don't think he eats crickets. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Bird · May 30, 2000

Wen, if that Boston Terrier ate all the grasshoppers I have in 2000 sq. ft., he'd grow to the size of a Great Dane. I thought they were bad last year, but I've never seen anything like this.

The grasshoppers are eating the blackberries as fast as they ripen. I picked blackberries this morning and should have gotten at least 4 to 6 quarts and didn't even get one full quart. And the berries usually last until mid-June, but I just went ahead an mowed'em down today, along with the remainder of the cabbage and broccoli. And we've got grasshoppers all over one side of the house (northwest side). I sprayed the entire exterior of the house with Diazinon yesterday and the grasshoppers were falling to the ground by the dozens, but today that side of the house is covered again. Had to go to town yesterday afternoon, and I noticed one of the big corn fields that's just been practically wiped out already.

Looks like it's going to be a tough year for the farmers in my neighborhood again this year./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Bird

W5FL · May 30, 2000

He wouldn't eat any dry food when there were lots of grasshoppers to catch.

I put out a pound of the Nolo Bait on the garden tonight. Hope it does some good.

I have not yet sprayed the yard with Diazinon yet, but it is time to do it now. If the hose is long enough, I am going to also spray the fruit trees to try to protect them from the grasshoppers eating all of the leaves off of them. They killed 7 or 8 trees last year.

This is the peak of the sunspot cycle - do you think there is any coorolation? /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Bird · May 30, 2000

I just lost 4 trees last year and am still not sure whether it was the grasshoppers or the drought, or the combination. Only one was a fruit tree; big red plums.

As for the sunspots, it's an interesting thought. I have no idea whether there's any correlation. I've heard some say we need a cold winter to kill off the grasshoppers as well as other bugs and others say that has nothing to do with it. Just another of the many things that I don't know./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

Alan L. · May 31, 2000

The problem with the insecticides nowadays is that they don't stay for any length of time, for health reasons of course. Diazinon is a great product. It kills for a while but disipates rapidly. The neighbors' grasshoppers just take up where your dead ones leave off.

I wish there was something that the plants could take up inn their leaves that would kill those critters. I have millions of them on my 24 acres, and I'm afraid they are going to kill my cedar elm trees.

W5FL · May 31, 2000

Grasshopper Bait Recipe

The following Grasshopper Bait Recipe is passed out by a local nursery:

25# Wheat Bran
1# 10% Sevin Dust or 2# 5% Sevin Dust
1 qt Molasses
2 qt Water

Mix Sevin dust, molasses and water together first
Then blend in Wheat Bran
Set out in pie tins or sprinkle around.

KEEP AWAY from pets and kids!!!!!!!

W5FL · May 31, 2000

I understand that many people used to use Arsenic for Grasshoppers, but that seems to be frowned on today as it is so deadly to everything that it comes in contact with. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

W5FL · Jul 8, 2000

I found larger containers of Nolo Bait at the local feedstores. They had sold out at one and I got the last two 5 pound buckets at the other one. They were $29.95 for 5 pound buckets. That is about 1/3 of what I was paying by the pound can at the nursery. Maybe I can still salvage part of the garden and trees from the Grasshoppers and the Crickets could stand a little thinning out before they start to try to come inside in the fall.

Anonymous Poster · Jul 19, 2000

Hey! I've had grasshopper investation for the last three years, lost all shurbs the first year. But now, thanks to a product called "Tempo", I have not lost anything this year and it kills them immediately and believe it or not, it keeps killing for three to four weeks! I personally endorse this product since it has worked for me. The only problem is most feed stores or ag businesses only sell it premixed at and enormous price. The one I use, sells it by individual packs, (Actually not suppose to do this) and it is very CHEAP, you mix it in one gallon of water and spray! It treats 1000 square feet. Treats everything from termites to fireants and grasshoppers, mesquitos, flies, fleas, ticks, wasps, hornets, beetles, and on and on. For more information contact me at pami@hyperusa.com.

W5FL · Jul 19, 2000

Thanks for the information. That is the first positive thing I have seen, unfortunately my feed store did not seem to have this product. Any further information needed before they carry off the dirt.

Roy · Aug 13, 2000

Around my place we have had very little crickets this year. The nights are relatively silent. At first I thought it might have to do with our cooler and wetter summer. Yesterday it hit me. This year we have had a toad explosion. Never saw so many (first year that they are coming right up to the house). Cute a friendly little critters. If crickets and grasshoppers are a problem, I can send a couple of bushels of Eastern toads!

Bird · Aug 13, 2000

Roy, that's interesting, because as far apart as we are, and we have the heat and drought here, but we've also got more toads than I've seen in many years. In fact, I don't recall ever having seen so many. We still have crickets and grasshoppers, but not nearly as many grasshoppers as we had a couple of months ago.

Bird

Roy · Aug 13, 2000

Bird, that is interesting. There are a number of people studying global changes in reptiles, mainly frogs (population counts and mutations). Maybe this is the year-of-the toad?

Last year, it was oak trees. I had probably 100 oak trees per acre. Marked some for keeping, mowed the rest down. What go me was that there are no mature oak's around me, that I know of.

Bird · Aug 13, 2000

Nature does provide many mysteries. This year, we had more cottontail rabbits, and more coyotes, than we've had in the last 5 years, too. They seem to go in cycles, but makes me wonder about the causes. And I've seen some things in the news about studying the frogs and their mutations; weird, huh?

Bird

Alan L. · Aug 13, 2000

I hate crickets. My solution to the one that keeps me up at night is to put 3 shells in my 12 guage. Then I crawl around on my hands and knees where I think the sound is coming from. Sometimes waving your hand back and forth by your ear will help you locate the source of the sound. Once the general area is discovered, I blow the living crap out of the floor and wall there with #8 birdshot, I mean empty the gun on it. Then I go back to bed and worry about the repairs later /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif.

W5FL · Aug 15, 2000

It will work just as well to shoot the shotgun outside regularly without ear plugs.

Soon, the high frequency hearing loss will almost completely eliminate the cricket chirps. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

RJohnson · Aug 22, 2000

My wife doesn't hold with spraying too much around the house (fire ants are an exception) so she went and got some chickens. They will chase any grasshopper in the yard until it has been eaten or flew over the fense. So far everything is growing as long as I water it and the grasshoppers are missing from my yard at least. Probably chased them all over to the neighbors.
Anyway WEN you might try some organic insect controls (chickens) before you start spraying.

Bird · Aug 22, 2000

We don't have very many grasshoppers anymore around our place; nothing left for them to eat, what they hadn't already eaten dried up and died (or else the grasshoppers dried up and died)./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif And they tell me you can't raise chickens in this part of the country; the baby chicks would fall into the cracks in the ground and be lost./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Bird

Hawgee · Aug 22, 2000

Bird, we've got the moisture. My chickens failed too. I just don't know if it was too wet, I planted em too deep or too close together. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Roy · Aug 22, 2000

Chickens are great predators. Dated a lady in collage (seems like eons ago), whose family raised chickens. They kept 2 of them in the house. Were great mousers. They put any cat to shame.