Grasshoppers in My Garden

So the one good thing that may have occurred due to the crazy rain we had the last couple of weeks is that the grasshoppers I discovered a couple days before it started seem to have disappeared. Will they come back? I don't know. I hope not.

Here's a little guy I found on my pepper plant that has produced a total of, yes, one pepper all summer. Miraculously, it started flowering again a few days after the rain stopped. I don't know if it's coincidental that I also haven't seen a grasshopper lately ... I have seen them in other parts of my yard.

A grasshopper on my bell pepper plant ... look in the middle.

Grasshoppers may be the reason my fall lettuce seedlings keep getting eaten (they like their lettuce).

So what to do?


Next year, I think I'll follow some of the tips that my alma mater, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, laid out on it website:

• Keep vegetation nearby green so grasshoppers are not enticed into the garden.
• Leave an area near the garden unmowed (or plant tall grasses nearby, which I saw on another website), which apparently is more attractive to the grasshoppers than the garden would be. I don't know how they know this - maybe they surveyed the grasshoppers? Either way, it seems like an easy enough thing to do.
• In the spirit of the tall grass idea, you can also a different lush flower or vegetation. They suggest zinnias.

There are some solutions that only affect grasshoppers. A naturally occurring fungus can be used when you're really under attack, according to several websites, that only affects grasshoppers - it's sold as Nolo Bait or Semaspore.

Some organic solutions from Mother Earth News: Grasshopper Control Expert Advice. I like the bird perch idea - attracting birds that will subsequently eat the hoppers.

The good news is that grasshopper populations can vary dramatically year to year, and so it may not even be a problem next year. Here's hopping! OK, that was bad. But I couldn't help it ...