Eat The Yard

In the past few days I have noticed some nibbling in disparate parts of my yard that suggests grasshoppers.  The complete consumption of leaves here and there in a particular area and the fact that I can’t find the culprit on the hit plants also point toward this pest among others.  Caterpillars I tend to find upon close inspection, snails leave a distinctive trail, and mammals seem to dig a bit and disturb the earth when present.  Here just the leaves had been gnawed down to the veins or decapitated at the stem.

The destruction was less swath-like and more potpourri-y: the compost potatoes in the lower yard, the (used-to-be) thriving pumpkins in the upper yard, the potted squash, the veggies started in trays for friends.  I suppose a little bit of everything is the permaculture ideal, rather than a lot of one thing.  The grasshopper(s) did not wipe out a single crop, and if the chewing stays at this level and with this dispersal throughout the season, the plants will likely recover, take it in stride, and still be productive.  The grasshoppers will be dead in 60 – 90 days, anyway.  At the start of this season I wrote that I’d be willing to share about 25 percent of my effort with the wild, and this — despite the initial panicked, palpitation-inducing flashbacks it caused — is right about there.

My concern is that grasshoppers don’t do math.

The key to dealing with this insect is prevention — which is always nice to learn when the pest is present.  Luckily, much of the prep I did to combat other threats in the pre-season is recommended to reduce grasshoppers to nuisances rather than conquerors.  In had planted winter rye and wheat around the margins of my yard and until recently had allowed a wall of weeds to thrive as a cover around some of my early sowing.  Apparently, such areas provide havens for grasshoppers that they will rarely find reason to leave.  I also planted early this year to get a jump on other pests, particularly the local varmints.  This works against grasshoppers, too, in that it allows the young plants to get established while the grasshoppers go through several of their less mobile, pre-wing stages of development.  And I have done mixed planting this season; no area is devoted to a single crop in abundance.  The benefit of this particular strategy is playing out in the way the current feasting has been spread around.

Additionally, every forum I read and each book I picked up suggested getting a few chickens because they will eat most of the grasshoppers in their range before the bugs fully develop.  We did this, but unfortunately our chickens are too young for roaming.  Next season.

Once present, however, grasshoppers seem to be persistent, voracious, and nearly indestructible.  They will chew through cloth row covers, eat entire plants, and do not succumb to many pesticides — even if sprayed directly.  A parasite called Nosema locustae can be used to control outbreaks, but it takes several weeks to be effective, by which time a small garden can be destroyed.  Diatomaceous earth can work on them as it does woodlice (see “A roly-poly problem” posted on Mar. 24), but grasshoppers are so mobile I’d have to dust much of the yard and reapply every time I water.  Hand picking and squishing (or feeding to willing chickens) is the only recommendation without a caveat.

I’d be happy to follow this last bit of advice if I could find one of the little buggers.

Tags: permaculture, pests, summer crop