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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 1, 2021 19:58:38 GMT -6
I got to looking this evening and saw that we didn't have a grasshopper thread. Not one that I could locate anyhow. --- I thought to myself, "No way, we don't have a grasshopper thread!"
So, I guess we'll have one now.
The reason I was going to write about grasshoppers tonight made it kind of tough to know where I should post this. We have a lame goose that is in a cage right now, wounds being treated, and in confinement so the other geese won't hurt it any worse. It was hobbling around in the pasture on one leg this morning and the others were ganging up on it, pecking it. They sometimes do that to an injured animal. I've seen bulls gang up in the holding pens at the rodeo and actually kill another injured bull. (Maybe, it's a hardwired survival of of the fittest type of thing?) Nature can be so cruel ...
Anyhow, I ended up caging the injured goose and spending an hour or so out in my garden trying to find something it would like to eat. I picked a pile of green grass to put in the cage with it and it wouldn't eat the green grass. I poured a can of chopped corn in the feeder and it wouldn't eat that either, so I thought it might eat a grasshopper or two if I could catch it some of those. Trouble was, the grasshoppers were in no kind of mood to be goose food this morning and I'm getting too old to be chasing them around in the hot sun, so I ended up going back inside to fetch out old reliable; My thirty-something-year-old Daisy BB gun, and off I went a hunting grasshoppers!
Maybe now, you can sort of see my delema ... should I post this under geese, tips and tricks, tools and other gizmos, homesteading, or insects? I finally decided on the latter.
As it turns out, hunting grasshoppers with a BB gun is somehow, strangely satisfying and somewhat rewarding for your poultry, and for your garden veggies. I managed to bag about twenty of them within half an hour. They were mostly those big ol' yellow ones that reach about an inch and a half long this time of year, but there was one giant green and black one that was over two inches long, and several black winged hoppers that resemble tiny birds and make that 'clicking' noise as they fly away. (The kind no ordinary human can ever chase down). Those were espescially satisfying to bag. So much so, that hunting grasshoppers with a one pump Daisy Red Ryder BB gun might become my new pass-time.
if any of you ever decide to try this at home, always be aware of where any over-shooting might end up. You don't want to be known for the rest of your life as the neighborhood "Dick Cheney."
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Post by macmex on Sept 2, 2021 10:18:51 GMT -6
Back in 2013 I had the worst problem with grasshoppers ever. They were so thick that they were wiping out EVERYTHING in the garden. They especially liked my pole beans. I noticed they gravitate to stuff that's tall. I almost threw in the towel and just quit gardening that year but couldn't bring my self to do it. Pesticides were pretty much out of the question. I knew from what Dawn Coyle (and others), over in the Oklahoma Gardening forum had recounted, that pesticides won't stop hordes of grasshoppers. The only "pesticide type" of control that had a chance was to use biological control (spores which infect and kill grasshoppers) early in the season. The infected grasshoppers become weak and are then eaten by the uninfected ones, thus spreading the spores.
I noticed that the grasshoppers slept at night. They sought a high perch and after it had been dark for a while, they were no longer alert, though they would wake up if disturbed. So, I went and bought a small shop vac and put together some extension cords and ... went grasshopper hunting. I already had to be up at 3 am, in order to do chores before work, so for about three weeks I got up at 2:30 am and put in 1/2 hour of grasshopper hunting. I found hordes of them on the tops of my corn, pole beans and along the top of the garden fence. The technique was simply to scoot the nozzle of the vacuum along, the surface where they roosted, and suck them up before they could wake up and flee. Each morning I stopped when the vacuum was full. Then I'd set the vacuum in our deep freeze, do chores and go to work.
When I came home from work I'd take the vacuum out of the freezer and let the poultry have the grasshoppers. Some of them were not yet dead, but as they unthawed and moved they became the favored targets of my ducks, chickens and turkeys. At first the poultry was super excited when I would show up with the vacuum. But after a week or two I noticed they'd run over, look at the grasshoppers and then, looking disappointed, they'd walk off as if saying, "What? More grasshoppers?!"
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 2, 2021 19:58:20 GMT -6
I remember that year! We took George's advice and ran power for 600' feet to our garden, so we could run a wetvac out there at night. It took a #4 aluminum triplex wire to make it that far without a voltage drop. (I paralleled two 110 volt circuits from the same phase to take advantage of the triplex). It would have taken a much bigger wire to make up for that distance if I had just run a single circuit.
I used a slightly different method with the wetvac than George did, as I had kids at home back then to help me catch the grasshoppers. We duct-taped the vacuum hose to the side of the vacuum can and left it running. Everyone had their own 'Pringles can' grasshopper cage going and we would all go along the rows with flashlights, catching grasshoppers by hand until our cans were full. Then, we'd take turns sucking the cans out with the wetvac. We'd catch two or three pounds of grasshoppers every night that way, but hardly made a dent in their population.
I had the same experience with the chickens as George did. After a few nights, my chickens were no longer interested in eating any more grasshoppers. I had a few fishing buddies who were interested for a week or so, then after a few pounds of grasshoppers, they didn't want any more of them either. Same thing with the fish, by mid-July, a grasshopper could safely swim the width of the Illinois River without a perch even taking notice.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2021 11:19:42 GMT -6
George, I find it amazing that you had that much free space in your freezer.
Ron, the fish . . . my gut . . . laughing out loud.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 3, 2021 16:05:11 GMT -6
The reason I know this for a fact is that I took a wet vac full of grasshoppers to the Illinois River with me that summer to go fishing and never even got a bite. I parked my truck up at the edge of the gravel road that leads into Eagle Bluff and carried the wet vac, my fishing chair, a tackle box, and a rod and reel about 50' feet down to the edge of the water. I found a good shade tree there and set my chair up. I fixed the end of the vacuum hose near the armrest, so I could reach it easily, then sat down and began fishing.
Every time a grasshopper would crawl out the end of the hose, I'd either put it on my hook, or else I'd toss it out on the water to try and entice a hungry perch. About 30 minutes into it, and several drowned grasshoppers later, an Oklahoma State Game Ranger drove by, then made a quick U-turn, and parked off at a distance, peering out his window, while watching me fish.
After a long while, he put his truck in gear and crept up along the shoulder of the road to get a closer look... I could hear the gravel crunching under his tires as he coasted along. Then, I heard him get out of the truck. He closed his door, hefted his gun belt, and approached me with a great deal of suspicion.
When he got up alongside me, he cocked his flat-brimmed hat forward, put his right hand at his hip, ready for anything, and with his best authoritarian voice, asked me for my fishing license.
After he saw that everything was in order, and I told him that I used to work Law enforcement and that I'd had a Lifetime Hunting Fishing License ever since my sixteenth birthday; he began to soften his tone and became a little friendlier. Finally, he said, "well, the reason I walked all the way down here just now, was that I saw that power cord stretched out behind you there and was wondering what the Heck you were doing with a vacuum cleaner down here on the water?"
I said, "It's full of grasshoppers." I opened it so he could have a look inside. "I just carried it down here so I wouldn't have to chance half of them getting turned loose by opening the lid back up by the truck. I keep the end of the suction hose right beside my chair, so that every time I see one come crawling out, I can grab it and put it on my hook."
"Oh, well," he said, "That's okay. It's just that when I saw that cord laying out behind your chair that way, I thought you had rigged up some kind of fish shocking device."
Then, I replied, "Don't I wish! At least then, I might have caught a fish!"
After that, he drove away. That was when I decided I'd had enough excitement for one day, dumped my wet vac full of grasshoppers into the River, and watched them all float away.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2021 19:42:13 GMT -6
That's an amazing story. I guess if we have a lot of hoppers, then everyone and every place else has a lotta hoppers. I've seen more hoppers this year than before, but that doesn't mean they're seriously terrible or such. Maybe they'll be worse next year.
I placed a lightweight frost blanket over my brassicae seedlings securing the edges with the weight of the trays. Yesterday, I lifted the blanket to see if they needed watering and a mature grasshopper was inside munching way.
So, I'm wondering what ambient temperatures keeps the grasshoppers away. Found this research that suggests they don't do well at less than 95degrees and they will perch at higher elevations to help maintain that temp.
They bury themselves in the soil overnight? That study suggests they don't do that when the ground is ungrazed as the soil temperatures in soil with heavy vegetation is cooler than those without. Guess mowing can make them worse.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 4, 2021 11:20:47 GMT -6
I’ve seen more grasshoppers this summer than ever before, but they’re nothing like the plagues you guys describe. They are big, though, often three inches long. They seemed to like my pole beans in particular, though outside of the garden they also appeared to eat young leaves on my citrus trees. Maybe mine are fat and lazy because they don’t tend to move till I’m right beside them. I even flick them off my plants with my fingers while I’m working. I still probably couldn’t hit one with a BB gun if I tried.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 5, 2021 21:53:15 GMT -6
I couldn't flick a grasshopper with my finger if I tried, that's why I use the BB gun.
I've heard that grasshopper plagues recur about every 25-years. They hit in drought years when there is not enough Spring rain to drown their young. The grasshopper plague of 2012-2013 was by far the worst two years I've seen in all my 60 years. I lost all but 6 of my 50 fruit trees during the plague of hoppers that we had here. The swarms of grasshoppers climbing high into the branches were stripping the bark off of all the limbs each night. After the leaves were stripped and the bark was gone, the trees died.
They were so bad that they would devour entire beefsteak tomatoes in the night. The next morning, I'd find a ring chewed through my Plasticulture where the tomato juice had dripped and the hoppers below all crowded in to drink it up. They stripped my corn so badly that all there was left of it were the bare stalks. They even ate the shucks off the sweet ears of corn and left the cobs bare, while still on the stalk. They ate my onions below-grade until all I would find was the onion skin and root inside a dished-out spot where the whole onion bulbs used to be. They ate entire peaches, leaving nothing but the bare seed hanging from the dead stem.
Right now, there are swarms of grasshoppers destroying property in the midwest, due to drought. Here's a link: www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/04/grasshopper-swarms-us-west-drought
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 13, 2021 10:29:15 GMT -6
I caught more grasshoppers this morning than I've caught all summer! The trick was in getting out there while it was still too cool for them to hop. I didn't look at the time, but it was just as the sun was peaking over the horizon (before the light falls directly on your face). I was out there in the garden, harvesting mature okra pods for seed and noticed that several grasshoppers had chosen the tattered stalks as high perches for the night. To my surprise, they did not attempt to move as I reached to catch them. (It was about 61 degrees when I left the house this morning).
I hurriedly returned to the goose pen to let the geese out, then called them to the garden and fed them grasshoppers for another several minutes. Being how this time of year is the grasshopper's breeding season, I often caught more than one hopper per swipe. The geese were delighted at this phenomenon and happily followed me around wherever I went, gobbling grasshoppers as the walked along. Unfortunately, the grasshoppers really cut into my harvest time and by 9:00 am, I only had about 700 to 800 pods gathered and was more or less played out by the experience. So, I'm taking a break until the heat of day passes and then, hopefully, I'll get back to it this evening before dark. (I got 3.5 pounds of seed shelled out today). It takes about 75 pods to make a pound of seeds, so that was sugnificant progress for one day's labor.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 15, 2021 11:52:29 GMT -6
Still cleaning up on grasshoppers every morning. The temperatures have been remaining cool enough that they can't hop away until about 8:00 am every day this week. By 9:00 am they are still sluggish, but by then, you'd better be fairly quick if you still want to catch them without having to chase them down first. My geese are loving this!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 21, 2021 12:57:07 GMT -6
Hallelujah! It was 57 degrees this morning!
No okra harvest this morning, because the pods are still wet from last night's rain, but it was such beautiful weather that I just had to get out to the garden anyway I turned the geese loose and called them to follow along. It was so cool that none of the grasshoppers moved at all. I caught 102 of them this morning. The geese were ecstatic!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2021 15:26:21 GMT -6
I woke to thunder at around 2am and stayed up. I flung open the doors and windows and absorbed the sound and smell of rain. The cooler wind was blowing through the screen doors. Glorious morning when the sun came up! I had to nap thru the day. It was worth it.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 21, 2021 23:01:24 GMT -6
Ain't that what naps are for?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2021 10:50:32 GMT -6
Yes, indeedy!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 22, 2021 13:54:15 GMT -6
What a wonderful way to start the first full day of Autumn! It was 41 degrees this morning at 7:00 am. After it being 95 degrees two days ago, I just had to go out there for the experience of being cold for the first time in a long, long, time. I came back inside the house with my teeth chattering!
No grasshoppers this morning at all. I think it was too cool last evening for them to climb up the okra stalks to roost. It was about noon before I saw anything moving. I only caught about half a dozen all day long.
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