Sheila,

lol lol lol

I've never looked too closely at their guts, and that is funny.

They haven't been too awful this year. It seems like they have come in waves and if you can knock out a wave of them, you have a week or two before more show up.

If you squirt the plant with water from the hose, they'll often climb to the top of the plant where it is easy to see them and get them.

I've had more birds than ever in the garden this year (and we've never had any shortage of birds, so that is saying a lot), and I suppose they are eating oodles of insects. Even though I am seeing very high levels of grasshoppers (still not as many as George has had), there is only moderate damage to most plants. The birds must be eating the grasshoppers.

Yesterday when I was mowing grass in the back pasture that was less than a foot tall, I bet we were having 12-14 grasshoppers per square yard. They just came flying up in the air with every step I took with the mower. It was hideous. Squash bugs are just sort of an annoying pest in my garden---they rarely can kill all the plants no matter how hard they try---but grasshoppers seem determined to rule the world.

I've only seen one squash bug this week, but I killed a bunch of them last week.

Dawn

I guess i am going to have to start doing more for the birds. I just figured they would peck your tomatoes. The grasshoppers are bad here too. But like you not as bad as Georges. My chicken coop is on the other side of the yard and i guess they just don't feel secure if they can't see it. It is amazing the difference in grasshoppers on their side. Need another coop on the other side but I don't think that's gonna fly.

Can you build your chickens a chicken wire or woven wire tunnel (they are called chunnels for short) to lead them to the garden? I saw one in a magazine once and thought it was a clever idea. Let me see if I can find one and link it.....

Okay, the one I found is not the same one I saw in the magazine. The one in the magazine even went underground (sort of like a bar ditch) right across the driveway so the chickens could cross the driveway without being run over, but the one I am linking is just as helpful, even without the driveway tunnel.

In my garden, poultry doesn't usually peck at tomatoes. When birds peck tomatoes, they mostly just want water, and I keep flat pans of water out in the yard when the chickens are free-ranging, which is for at least a portion of every day.

Some people build a larger version of a tunnel, making it tall enough a person can walk through and they build it all the way around the garden, encircling the garden like a moat encircles a castle. The chicken moat allows the chickens to catch and eat insects that are attempting to cross the moat to reach the garden, but keeps the chickens contained so they cannot damage the garden itself.

On the portion of our property where the chickens routinely roam, we have almost no grasshoppers, but go 100' in any direction and it is grasshoppers galore.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Example of a Chunnel

I would think you could use one of those "roving" fences. Friends of mine had a set for their puppies. They didn't want to let them run around in the back yard, so they used the front yard with the roving fence.

This is sorta the idea, but you might need a top on it to protect them.

Here is a link that might be useful: portable fence

or this is better

Here is a link that might be useful:

All,
This year i'm spraying the squash and zucchini leave's undersides antibacterial dish-soap in water 2x's a week. i have not been carried away by the squash bugs; this if my first year ever to be able to have squash. i started with a squirt bottle, i've upgraded to a pump sprayer. i've squished less than 20 adults with this approach so far this year. While spraying the leaf's underside if i see the red/brown eggs that leaf portion is removed. This method worked so well this year i'll try growing squash and zucchini again next year. Finally one more thing, Thank you Lord for this August rain!!

We've had a HORRIBLE time with squash bugs this year. We just started doing the Murphy's Oil soap and water in the squirt bottle and it seems to be working really well. We'll have to keep at it for a while to get rid of as many as we can. The recipe we found for a large squirt bottle was one inch of soap in the bottom of the bottle, fill it the rest of the way with water, don't shake it, squirt till you run out. Adults, nymphs, all of them. The soap coats them and they suffocate. You can actually watch them try to walk away after getting squirted and they take a few steps and just stop. Dead. No stink from squishing the adults. The nymphs don't hardly even move, they just freeze and they're dead. I go through first with a round of duct tape to get the eggs off as many leaves as I can. It spares the leaves from damage. My husband follows behind with the squirt bottle and enjoys watching them freeze in place. I can also pick up groups of nymphs with the duct tape. The larger adults seem to be able to manage to unstick themselves somehow. If I do get an adult, I squish it just to be safe. That freaky bizzare blue green guts gets me every time. LOL!