What To Do If A Swarm Of Grasshoppers Invades Your Yard

While a grasshopper here and there is relatively simple to deal with, it's a different story when an entire swarm of these critters descends upon your yard. Like Augustus Gloop eating his way through Wonka's chocolate factory, these voracious insects have an insatiable appetite for many of the wonderful and essential crops that belong in your garden. As soon as these hexapods land on your carefully manicured garden beds, they'll get straight to work devouring your young, tender leafy greens. While you may not be able to stop a swarm of grasshoppers in the air, there is something you can do about it on the ground. All it takes is a little pest prevention DIY.

While you won't get large grasshopper swarms in all areas of the U.S., you will find them in the western States, particularly parts of the Great Plains. While you may have heard about how effective chickens are against grasshoppers, if you're looking for a fix that doesn't involve poison or feeding and cleaning up, all you need to do is head to your local hardware store. For this grasshopper prevention hack, you'll need either hardware cloth or chicken wire, 22.5-inch-long 1-by-1-inch lumber pieces, 2.5-inch finishing nails, steel staples, and some wood glue. To add a bit more of a punch, you can also get some neem oil.

Here, you're going to essentially be building modular screen covers that you can place in your garden beds. You're going to use the lumber pieces to create the frame of the panels, with the hardware cloth or chicken wire as the screen. A handy tip if you're on a budget is to go for the chicken wire, as it costs less. Once you've cut everything to size and created the panel frames, staple the screen into place. With the individual screens ready, you can either secure them together with hinges or simply tie them together.

Position the panels as walls and as a roof over your beds. Don't place too many panels alongside each other without including a side wall, as you may find that it collapses in a bit of wind or rain. Once you've created your garden bed screen covers, grab the bottle of neem oil. While the oil will help to stop them from breeding, it will also be effective at repelling grasshoppers from your garden bed. Mix up two quarts of warm water with half a teaspoon of liquid soap. Then, add in three teaspoons of pure neem oil. Pour it into a spray bottle, give it a good shake, then soak your plants. This is a simple fix to get rid of grasshoppers in your garden beds. The alternative is to simply call in the pest experts.