Outdoor grow in Northern California. I have an insane hatch of grasshoppers. So far I’ve only seen one on my plants but I want to stay ahead of any issues. Will they attack my plants, and if so what can I use to control them? I grow organically so that would be my preference.
Thanks!
I think @Caligurl may be a good one to call upon for this. My suggestion is some kind of netting. Bugs that fly, or are more mobile than, say aphids, are tough to prevent.
You could try making grasshopper tea. It’s the same idea as grasshopper IMO . But has a shorter brew time. So the tea bag is just grasshoppers you catch. The microbes that start breaking down their bodies in a bucket of water. Handful of compost. Bubble it for 48 hours. Spray them down. It will infect the living grasshoppers. You can substitute any bugs that are chitinous, flashlight over a bucket of water or a bucket of water w a drip of molasses under a bright porch light. Just leave it a night you will have a pile of bugs. I think it works better with the target insect. You may need to go Rambo and net some hoppers. Also the smell of rotting grasshoppers drives them off.
In the meantime, make real IMO. Cut the rice 50% and substitute dead grasshoppers. Burry it as usual and wait 10 to 14 days for it to go white with fungus and bacteria. Then slurry a tablespoon of the white magic fungus kill any grasshoppers like a plague if any stayed around after the “hopper” tea.
I did this successfully to sawflies and stink bugs that thought my raspberries and fruit trees were up for grabs. They all die being covered with white fungi and rusts that just destroy whatever bugs go into the soup. Here is a video that has more of a recipie than me. It does work, just not immediate like pesticides. It takes like 48hours to infect the local population with a local microbe plague.
Thanks!
That’s really cool! Thanks!
I think the insect netting works great and it’s relatively cheap! Comes in all sizes an you can water right through it and the sun penetrates just fine
Thank you