Grasshoppers are plentiful this year. Why? A look at these intriguing insects.
We’ve been noticing a lot of grasshoppers on the sunflowers along the south side of the house. John’s dad loves sunflowers, and he planted dozens of them. Back on Long Island, the sunflowers never grew above a foot tall before rabbits or chipmunks destroyed them. The chipmunks, in particular, adored the seeds and dug up the seeds and seedlings faster than Jack could plant them. Not so in Virginia. He was able to get quite the crop started and now we have towering eight foot high, glorious sunflowers growing against the house. They remind me of our trip to South Dakota when John stopped the car along the highway just to take a picture of the miles and miles of sunflowers growing in the farmer’s fields.
But one thing we’ve noticed on our own sunflowers are grasshoppers – and lots of them. The photo above shows one on a sunflower. The gray area is Pierre the cat. John holds Pierre up to the sunflower and the grasshoppers turn away. They hop a bit to one side. We’ve tried it several times and no matter how quiet Pierre is, they seem to know he’s a predator!
I didn’t know anything about grasshoppers, so I conducted some research. Colorado State Agriculture has some good information on controlling grasshoppers as pests.
I learned that our insect visitors are probably katydids, rather than grasshoppers because katydids have long horns and grasshoppers, short ones (who knew?). I also learned that they do eat plants, and that’s the cause of the big holes in our sunflower leaves. The most fascinating fact is that they can camouflage themselves and change colors! So that explains why we see brown ones on the ground and green ones on the sunflowers.
The damage to the leaves is unsightly but doesn’t seem to bother the sunflowers, so we are not doing anything about the grasshoppers. Sitting in the house and watching them leap from plant to plant entertains Pierre, after all!
My latest gardening articles are posted to various websites, so if you have a minute, check them out – also have a new alternate health article on the benefits of drinking tea.
Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.
