I used it one year in the early 2000s, along with pot marigold (calendula) and cilantro after we had several bad grasshopper years in a row. While the grasshoppers didn't eat the horehound, cilantro or calendulas, they ate plants growing right beside them, so I considered those three as failures for use as barrier crops or repellents, and didn't grow them again for that purpose. I still grow calendulas for their beauty and cilantro as an edible crop for us, but don't grow horehound. It was really easy to raise from seed.

I think that with grasshoppers, a lot depends on what sort of year it is. In the years when the migratory population is huge, nothing really helps. In a typical year, I use Semaspore when the hoppers are in the nymph stage and it helps reduce their population a lot. The issue in my garden usually isn't the grasshoppers that hatch here in spring because the Semapore gets a lot of them and birds get many of the rest. The problem is why they begin migrating in from the fields in huge hordes in hot weather. Since Semaspore's active ingredient is not really effective in high heat, you can't use it on the summer ones that fly in.

We had a couple of incredibly awful years in the early 2000s, in conjunction with or just after some bad drought years. In one year, the hoppers were so abundant and so ravenously hungry that they ate holes in our fiberglass window screens and chewed on the cotton rag rugs on the porch and the cotton pillows on the porch screen. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at that point, that already had eaten anything/everything in the garden, including the fruit and foliage of the fruit trees, and were even eating the fruit tree bark.

Semaspore kills slowly, but I see a gradual decrease over a period of several weeks. One of the great things about it is that grasshoppers often feed on....dead grasshoppers. Since the Nosema locuste is a living organism, it persists in the dead bodies, thereby spreading its brand of death and destruction to the grasshoppers that feed on dead grasshoppers. It is sort of the gift that keeps on giving. Normally, I buy a one pound bag and treat my garden and the area around the house. Based on last year's huge infestation, I am going to buy a 5-lb tub or bag this year. I have a friend who ranches in Texas who buys it in some vast quantity like 50 lb or 80 lb bags.

There's also EcoBran, which is available from Planet Natural, or you can Google and find recipes online to make a similar type of grasshopper bait, which is essentially wheat bran laced with Sevin. I have used it in desperate times, and it seems to help with grasshopper control, but I don't like using Sevin, so generally just endure the horrible weeks of munching grasshoppers.

What I have found with a lot of the old folk remedies for grasshoppers, including garlic spray, hot pepper wax, sprinkling flour on plants (supposedly it gums up their mouths or stomachs), etc., is that they aren't all that effective in times of high infestation.

You might want to Google and read about Surround WP. It might work. Some people have found it does and some say it doesn't, so I think it likely depends on how many grasshoppers there are and how hungry they are.

I'll add this about Nolobait and Ecobran. I used them in one awful year when the hoppers were very bad. I didn't even think I was achieving any sort of control with them because we still seemed to have plenty of grasshoppers. Then, my friend Fred, who is a rancher, farmer and home gardener, stopped by one day and urgently demanded to know what I was using to kill the grasshoppers because, he said, I "didn't have any" grasshoppers here. That was news to me, as I had tons of grasshoppers here. However, from his viewpoint, as he drove up our road, grasshoppers flew up from the bar ditches as he drove by---except at our place where he saw either very few or none. As he was driving by several times a day going from one ranch to another, he knew we had far fewer grasshoppers than anyone else did. So, with the 1-2 punch of Semaspore and Ecobran, we had greatly reduced the population (apparently) compared to how high the population was all around us.

Either last year or the year before, our son's ex-wife stopped by to visit and commented that she didn't see any grasshoppers fly up out of our bar ditch as she approached our house but had seen them everywhere else on her drive from another county to ours. I found that interesting because I've never told her the story about Fred's observation, which occurred many years before she even met our son. To get that same observation from two people independently of one another in different years tells me that the Semaspore works to an extent, although it doesn't control the migrants that arrive later in the year.

Driven to the brink of insanity last year by grasshoppers that were stripping my tomato plants down to bare stems, I sprayed with a chemical pesticide. It knocked the hoppers back for a week or two but I hated everything about it. It was the first time I'd used a synthetic pesticide to spray the entire garden in about 2 decades. I hated doing it. I hated the smell of it. I hated knowing it was harming beneficial insects. I hated the way pest insects (of all kinds) rebounded more quickly than the beneficial insects that feed upon them. An, of course, after a week or two, a whole new bunch of migratory grasshoppers flew in and started a new round of damage. I won't say that I'm 100% certain I'd never again spray with a synthetic pesticide when grasshoppers are an issue, but I am 99.99% certain I will not.

For what it is worth, in the years when they were so bad in the early 2000s, the farmers and ranchers around me sprayed with Dimlin and other registered pesticides and didn't even have as good of a result with them as I had with Semaspore. I think that is one reason that Fred was so fired up when he thought I had a magical, secret, grasshopper-killing remedy.

Dawn,
Thanks again. You are the best.
If the climate moves to hotter and drier we can expect more hopper infestations. I wonder if there is a crop I could use to attract the hoppers. If so, maybe I could use that crop to kill the hoppers too.

Maybe I could plant a sacrificial border crop on the perimeter of my garden.

Johnny, You're welcome. Sadly, I have a lot of experience with large groups of uninvited grasshoppers dining at our place and making a general nuisance of themselves.

There are a handful of plants the grasshoppers love, love, love to visit and, in and around my garden, these are the ones they devour first, beginning when the newly hatched hoppers are very small---maybe 1/8" long or even smaller. They always go to lemon balm first. I don't know why. After they have chewed it up pretty seriously, then they move on to catnip. They don't bother much of anything else as long as they still have those two herbs to devour. However, it might be that those are just two of the earliest herbs to leaf-out so it might not be as much of a choice as I think it is. (My catnip has been green almost all winter and is getting big and very green now that the cold weather has left us for a while.) Eventually they start feeding on lettuce, bean foliage and corn. If you grow early corn, they might damage only the leaves. With later corn, they always seem to show up early enough to munch on the corn silks as well as the foliage. Again, those are some of the earlier plants that I'll have growing as the hoppers are gaining size in April and May.

Outside the garden? They simply adore lambs quarters and also henbit early in the season. I purposefully left some lambs quarters plants standing across the driveway from my garden last year thinking maybe I could kill the hoppers there. There would be congregated on those plants very early in then day and I always checked those plants first. Then, I'd sprinkle the Semaspore (when the hoppers were still small enough and the weather still cool enough) on the lambs quarters (and also on the lemon balm and catnip). Within the garden itself, I only used the Semaspore most of the time, preferring not to use EcoBran on plants we were going to eat.

Later on in the year, as the large numbers of migratory locusts flew in, they ate almost everything and with an astonishing speed, but they mostly feasted on snap bean plants and corn until there weren't any snap bean plants left. Then they seemed to eat any and everything else in no particular order, and not just the veggie plants, but flowers as well, particularly zinnias, morning glories and hollyhocks. They didn't feast much on my lettuce because it was in containers up close to the house and I put row covers on it when the hoppers first appeared.

Kim, I usually scout for hoppers every day. When I see the first tiny ones appearing, I order my Semaspore. Hoppers have hatched out here as early as January but March is more normal, and they continue hatching forever and ever once they start. Usually the Semaspore arrives within a couple of weeks. I start using it when the hoppers are roughly 1/4-1/2" long. It works fastest and best on the tiny nymphs, but I've had it kill them even in the later instars. An important thing to remember about Semaspore is that it is a living microorganism, so it has an expiration date planted right on the bag. You can make it last as long as possible by keeping it in the refrigerator. If I see a container in the store that is past its expiration date, I don't buy it because it won't work.

Has anyone here checked the APHIS Rangeland Grasshopper Forecast for this year? I haven't. Last year I entirely forgot to check it, so I wasn't mentally prepared for the invasion. For us, last winter was exceptionally dry, which is the perfect condition for grasshoppers to hatch and grow. This year is a total weather opposite, so I'm hoping that means we'll have fewer grasshoppers.

And, I failed to mention that neem oil can be sprayed on the plants as an antifeedant but I hate to use it because I'd rather eat plants that haven't been sprayed with anything---either organic or synthetic in nature. Some people have success with neem (or with Garlic Barrier Oil) and others don't. I think more than anything else, the determining factor is how hungry they are. If they are really hungry, not much will deter them.

Dawn,
That was just what I needed. I'll plant some sacrificial crops on the perimeter. Thanks again.

Johnny, You're welcome. And, I forgot a key point. Plant a mixture of grains/grasses and broad-leaved plants. Some types of grasshoppers prefer one and some prefer the other, so covering all your bases is important. And, grasshoppers seem to adore sunflowers too, so your trap crop could be really attractive and useful as well.