When I walk outside to get the mail, the grass seethes and moves as small grasshoppers jump out of the way. It is a lot like the parting of the Red Sea. Of course, when this happens, the first question everyone has is how to get rid of the little buggers.
Difficult to Eliminate
Two things about grasshoppers make them hard to get rid of. They are very mobile so when you kill the ones on your place, more move in. Second, they have a pretty tough exoskeleton so you have to swat them pretty hard to knock them out. Just kidding, any 2X4 will do the job.
Nolo Bait Helps
Seriously, it is tough to kill them. Nolo™ bait seems to work as well as anything to knock them back. It is a bait sprayed with Paranosema (Nosema) locustae spores. These infect the grasshopper when it eats the bait. Gradually, the spores kill the pest. It works best on small grasshoppers because they are easier to kill. Even older grasshoppers will die, and they are less prone to feed and reproduce while the fungus is attacking them. Nolo™ bait is considered an organic pesticide and may be used in organic gardens.
Takes Time to Kill
Nolo™ bait is not a panacea, however. It takes time to work. That is time the grasshoppers are eating your stuff. While it does stick around to infect new grasshoppers, it needs to be reapplied after rain because the bait part gets nasty and the grasshoppers won’t eat it.
Not For Vegetable Gardens
Nolo™ bait is not labeled for use in vegetable gardens. It should be applied in bait stations in an adjacent part of the yard. This draws the grasshoppers from your garden as a bonus because they are busy eating the Nolo™ bait instead of your plants. You will have to keep the bait stations full so that any new grasshoppers find them and eat the bait instead of your plants.
Sevin Dust for a Quick Kill
If you have to kill the grasshoppers right now, you can use Sevin™ dust. Make sure you follow the directions and do not use it on anything it is not labeled for. The problem with using a broad spectrum pesticide like Sevin™ dust is that it kills the beneficial insects as well as the bad ones. Also, it doesn’t have much of a residual effect so you have to keep applying it.
Grasshoppers are certainly a plague this year. Good luck killing them.
Want to learn to garden? My first attempt at gardening ended up in failure. The weeds took over and squeezed the vegetables out. I was very frustrated by this waste of good seed, time, and money. So I became a master gardener and spent a lot of time helping other people avoid or overcome problems in their garden.
In order to help others garden successfully, I have written a book, Vegetable Gardening from the Ground Up, available in an ebook or a paperback from Amazon. It is also in Kindle Unlimited.
