A link from Organic Gardening's web site
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/top-10-beneficial-bugs-garden?page=0,0&cm_mmc=OGNews-_-751740-_-12142011-_-top_10_beneficial_bugs_for_the_garden
10 good bugs for your garden
Very informative, thanks honeybee.....but nothing there gets rid of my biggest problem - grasshoppers! Ugh.
Mary - I haven't seen grasshoppers here. They were a major plague when I lived in South Florida. Perhaps it's because we don't have grass? (shrug)
I don't have grass either but they are breeding and sleeping somewhere. In the mulch under my Lady Banks hedge I think.
I have what I thought was a grasshopper, but later found out it was a locust.
Thing was eating my lettuce. i shoo'd it, it looked at me thoughtfully, and then went back to eating. I had to hit it with the hose.
(so far) that was the only one I saw.
SFC - was this what you saw?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romalea_guttata
When I lived in South Florida people used to refer to them as locusts because of their voracious appetites! It's amazing how big they can get.
mmm, could be, but there were no colors on mine - it was the color of dead grass, with minimal variation of beige. The only way I even saw it was because it was against my bright green arugula and spinach mustards.
then it started hopping....
SFC - maybe it was a cricket and not a grasshopper - although I must admit I'm not sure of the difference between the two!
all I know is that this puppy was at least 3-5 inches long and scared the heck outta me, LOL!
....I know this is something I'm going to have to get used to, but I REALLY don't like bugs! (I can handle ladybugs; that's just about it, LOL)
There is a biological product, similar to Bt that kills grasshoppers. I can't remember where I saw it, maybe Green Methods. We only have a few small grasshoppers but a couple hundred miles north of here they come in droves. We stopped in a rest area to let Duke go potty and there were millions of them!
Grasshoppers are tought to get rid of because they ......well....hop. Over the repellant. If I could figure out where they laid the eggs and dig them up it would disturb the next generation and so on.....but I dunno where the buggers hide out.
Quote from Calalily :
There is a biological product, similar to Bt that kills grasshoppers. I can't remember where I saw it, maybe Green Methods. We only have a few small grasshoppers but a couple hundred miles north of here they come in droves. We stopped in a rest area to let Duke go potty and there were millions of them!
That's "NOLO" or "Semaspore" IIRC. I've tried using that stuff w/o much apparent success. You have to apply it at exactly the right stage of development, when they are still young, so you need to guess when a bad infestation is going to occur. The effects are said to increase over several years as the organism builds up, but we usually don't have consecutive years of large hopper populations anyhow. As far as I can tell, nothing short of a blowtorch affects the adults much.
On the page http://www.ghorganics.com/page12.html there are some interesting ideas on controlling hoppers.
-Rich
That's why they made for such a great scourge, to show Pharoah who was Boss! They're virtually indestructible and wreak great havoc!! ^^_^^