I hope they will move on soon. Is there any way to cover anything to preserve some plants....like row covers? Pot some up and bring them into the house? Any chance a green house would allow you to grow some things without the bugs? Have no idea if any of those ideas would help, but I always feel that if I come up with my best idea and try it, even if it doesn't work, I feel better because I am doing everything I can.

Are they all over your area, or just on your property? I wonder if you could garden at another location, like an allotment? Not sure how long your growing season is, but if not this year, then next year?

I am definitely going to stop complaining about the heat and the rabbits.

A quick search finds that this grasshopper problem is impacting gardens and agriculture across Colorado. Hopeful it’s just an extra rough year and it goes back to normal next year. It seems everyone is having extra challenges this year but the grasshoppers sound like the worst!

https://gazette.com/business/hopperpocalypse-colorado-farmers-say-this-years-grasshopper-infestation-the-worst-in-generations/article_91c15426-406a-11ef-bc72-c3dbb7c21196.amp.html

I was researching your problem and back in 1937 Colorada had to call a state of emergency for grasshoppers...Wow! I feel for ya! And this year there back in great numbers as you already know!

What a beautiful place Sam, no wonder the bugs love it. I hope you have many blessings to count that outweigh the garden destruction . 25 chickens sounds like a riot.

This is either the tenth or eleventh year my small apartment garden has languished again despite how hard I tried. I'm not putting my heart into it anymore, but the few plants that do ok give me some happiness.

I have grasshopper phobia ; when I was little we had a field out back where I happily spent the Summer catching grasshoppers, until one jumped in my mouth. I panicked and swallowed the thing - I still remember it gave a last kick in my throat before going down. I think I'd be inclined now to cut them to as many pieces as a grasshopper could be cut.

Sorry it's been such a rough year for you. It's something of a rebuilding year for me of moving and replacing underperforming roses and other plants that have been limping along for too long. In the long run it will be better, but right now things are sparse and thin all over. Trying to focus on getting them off to a good start and hopefully reaping the rewards down the line.

All the CO gardening groups I'm in are full of people talking about the grasshoppers, but somehow where I am north of Denver we've been mostly spared. Last year we got hit hard, but not this year when they're seemingly everywhere else. Just goes to show that nothing ever goes quite as you expect, sometimes for the worse, but sometimes for the better.

I'm in SoCal & for the past few years I've seen grasshoppers in my garden. At first, there were only a few, all adults. They were polite & didn't eat much. Every year there were more & this year for the first time, dozens of babies! They ate everything & were so quick it was impossible to catch them until... I was outside emptying my handheld vacuum & a light bulb went off in my head as I realized what I was holding. Oh the joy of catching those darn little green devils! At first I emptied the canister in the outside bin but then I thought What Am I Doing They're Alive, so after that I emptied onto the ground & my foot transported them to bug heaven. I used the vacuum for only 2 days & have not seen any since. Try it!

Wow Soozie Q - that sounds amazing! What kind of hand vaccum did you have? It's Amazon Prime Day today! [g]

I think any good vacuum would do, I happened to have a Bissell Pet Hair Eraser. Anything that'll suck those bugs in!

O, Sam, you have my heart-felt sympathy! Your place IS beautiful...

Sam, Sorry to hear it! The pic. of your yard is gorgeous!

That last pic of yours Sam belongs in a magazine! The landscape & that sky is just awesome!

Sam, it is sounding like a good day to vaccum. My heart goes out to you in your frustration. We have all had days when we are ready to rip and tear everything out and plant rocks. I hope you are not there yet because your place is gorgeous and God has a way of making all things new.

Soozie Q, I love the vacuum idea, a stroke of genius ! Safer than flaming arrows or boiling oil.

On the subject of a depressing garden , I felt pretty happy today to be inside the house instead of slaving in an unproductive garden on another roasting hot day. Out of 14 leaf bushes I have a few golf ball sized Earth Angel blooms and three Madame Anisette buds that are already browning ,wilted from the heat. It would be wise for me to derive the joy of Summer from a source other than roses.

The first miniscule Gypsy Charmer sunflower opened , vastly different from the glamorous photo where I bought seeds online. You can empty your grasshopper filled vacuum canister on my sunflower.

I am so sorry for the many garden woes. Grasshoppers are so destructive! Despite it all, the gorgeous setting means your garden is still lovely.

Sam you may need to use a regular sized vacuum with an extension cord to get the adult grasshoppers, if I see any big ones here I'll try that but I'm hoping by getting all the babies early I won't have to. That's terrible what they've done to your beautiful garden.

Berrypiez with the horrible heat that's common these days, summer is the new winter--stay indoors, do projects till it's ok to go outside again. I'm fortunate that we haven't had a heatwave yet this year, but in the past I've done things like dig up all the photos still in their envelopes from the drug store lol. There would only be a few that made it to albums, the rest are blurry or people's eyes would be closed. What a relief to finally get rid of them!

Sam - rotten grasshoppers!! I'm sorry for what they're doing to your slice of heaven.

Jim - utterly horrible!! Eeek!

Berrypie - I would have a phobia about grasshoppers too if that happened to me. Blech.

Soozie, we've had a pretty much non stop heat wave since June 7. I had very little season, and I can't remember when the 100+temps started, but I see no end of them in sight yet. So, like Berry, I have to get my gardening rewards from other plants whose blooms or fruits can take the heat, and I grow a lot of them. They also attract masses of pollinators. Diane

Diane, can you list some of your favorite plants that take the heat?

Prairie, here it goes quickly, and I'm sure I'll miss a lot: Rudbeckia, both annual and perennial. I prefer annual, plus they reseed and plant themselves all over and are easy to remove. Coneflowers, just like Rudbeckia, but they attract more pollinators. Penstemon of all kinds which pollinators and hummers love; lavender, the supreme pollinator attractor, butterfly bush, Russian sage, orlaya, Dara the wild carrot, Jupiter's Beard, hardy hibiscus. all kinds of super hot peppers, tomatoes, basil, lots of Rozanne cranesbill in part shade. Everything is on the drip system or watered by hand if in containers like the hot peppers. I live in a semiarid desert with 10 inches of annual precipitation, including snow. Diane

I forgot sunflowers. Bees love them.

Basil

Habaneros

Jalapenos

Jalepenos ripen to red? I always see them as green and I'm growing them this year and I'm getting a lot, I always wobble between leaving peppers to ripen, or keeping them picked so I get more. Great year for tomatoes and peppers! And I started Basil late....really late, they're still seedlings....lol. Love coneflower and sunflowers and lavendar and Russian Sage.

With only 10 inches of rain a year, do you end up watering a lot?

I was just out front. It was 99F here today which is at least the 10th day in a row of 90F temps here, which is very unusual for us. I watered things this morning and some of them are dried out again! I tried growing string beans, but I sowed them late and they were just coming up when it turned hot and they are all burned out. I'm waiting for some cooler temps to try it again.

We're going to be eating a lot of tomatoes and peppers!!

Beautiful photos!!

Yes, I water a lot. Our extensive drip system has, not only emitters for roses and shrubs, but countless tiny sprinklers attached to the drip lines, so everything that's planted out gets water. I like to water in the wee hours, and I control, not the computer, how often and when I water. Anything in pots and containers, plus a few extra annual beds of calendula and penstemon I hand water. The pots get a lot of dilute fertilizer in their waterings, but half their waterings are just plain water. I forgot to mention calendula, which contrary to "experts" blooms all summer for me and reseeds. And how could I forget my big plantings of snapdragons that bloom spring to hard frost if you snap off spent stems full of seeds, and which I drop in the flower beds? My snaps act as perennials, plus reseed. Thanks about the photos. Diane

Snaps and other plants in June.

A drip system is a necessity with 10 inches of rain a year, I would think. Everything looked lush in June. I love snapdragons too. I did think they were a cool weather annual, that's interesting they grow well for you all summer. What zone are you Diane? In your photo, is that a pink rose and a white rose growing with your snaps? That pink flower is just too cute! And I think I see either a purple or burgundy snap there too?

Really nice, you must work a lot in your garden, which is no surprise.

Diane - that last bee picture is a beauty!

That looks like a wonderful garden in the last photo, Sam! Too bad about the grasshoppers. I know that it is disheartening. I hope your chickens are gobbling them up and making fantastic eggs.

Prairie, I live outside Boise, ID in the dry hills, zone 7 hot and dry. Yes, everything is irrigated in southern Idaho, as it is in eastern Oregon. You've got to go west over the mountains to get to the wet part of Oregon. They take all our rain. It's mild enough in winter that all my snaps winter over and live more than one year. Last winter, I didn't lose a single snap, plus they added some new plants themselves. Boy, that was easy on me. I do work quite a bit in the garden, but it's too hot to do much more now other than hand water. And I'm heading for 79 years old. I do it all, including digging holes and lugging 5 gallon buckets full of compost, etc. Otherwise, I'd become a giant slug. The pink rose is actually Apricot Drift which varies between light apricot and pink. I grow about 8 of them. The white are just spent Drifts. Farther up the border is Tamora, looking whitish, but which is a light apricot. Our sun really lightens things. Beyond Tamora is Ballerina. There is a Jupiter's Beard just past Ballerina, and you can barely see Bernstein-Rose, and Julia Child. Wedged in it all are snapdragons. They are purple, pink, and burgundy. I'm so off topic now, but here are a couple of other photos of the same area. Diane

Tamora and Ballerina amongst the snaps, purple and pink.

More Apricot/pink Drift, orlaya is the white stuff, and you can just see Jude the Obscure hanging down on the upper left.

Diane, At 79 years old, I’m sure that all the gardening you do keeps you young! Use it or lose it, right? :-)

You’ve put together some great combos there with the roses and snaps and Orlaya. I LOVE it!!

My fault we’ve gone so off topic. Sorry Sam!! Now that I think of it, there is a conversation thread in the Rose forum and that would be the place for this. Thanks for sharing, it’s fascinating to see what other gardeners are doing and what conditions they work with.

Wow so many kind replies i know we all face our challenges. we had three or 4days of heat over 100 last week and it was just miserable so im sorry for those that are dealing with long stretches of heat. Those news articles are interesting. thank goodness they arent as bad as they have been historically. i did go buy a battery operated shop vac and attempted some vacumming this evening, but the hoppers were too quick, and the suction not strong enough. i may have to just pull out the corded big boy and try again.

Diane, your photos ate lovely. i wouldnt be able to grow anything here without sprinklers either, i habe every plant ona dripper. what a lot of work drip is to install, but usually plants do really well on drip. we tend to not get much rain here either. usually lots if snow, but not much the last fee years.

im totally glad this post went off topic, as thr topic is not a cheerful one.

i do have a handful of daylilies that are doing well despite all the attacks. maybe since their blooms only have to withstand the bugs for one day!

thanks again for all the replies. i was just having myself a pity party when i posted, and non- plant people dont seem to care about all the pests.

berrypie, I had to laugh about bringing the hoppers to your sunflower. i actually kept a bunch of volunteer sunflowers this year, as i had read they could be used as sort of a catch crop. but alas, the hoppers seem not to like them. haha at least they are cheerful, and the goldfinches love them. sorry your sunflowers were such a bust. i never have mich luck with any except the type that comes from bird seed.

Sorry about the grasshoppers. I had a terrible time with them when I brought some over from my old garden to my new garden through the potted roses I moved. They're too quick for me to catch with my hands, and they ended up de leafing some of the roses enough times that it ended killing them in the summer heat. What I've found works for me is going out with a can of raid spray and aggressively targeting any I see on leaves etc. I did that last year and this year I'm seeing much much less.

Mara - that's a shame that you brought them with you. Ugh. Hopefully you can Raid them all to death.

Sam, you'd probably have better luck vacuuming in the morning as insects are much slower in the relative cool of the morning.

Ninety degrees at 10:30 and wildfire smoke all over the place. Lovely. Hazardous air quality and storms this afternoon. Help! Diane

Diane, hopefully the storm will come. Do you still have Orlaya blooming? Mine was a star in early season but done 2 months ago.

Sam I really feel for you about those nasty bugs. Just like Japanese Beatles. It is disgusting looking at them and the poor rose plants messed up by them. Only good thing is they will go away in a couple weeks. And the last picture is so enchanting

Roses are fine and I'm not. Orlaya is over, but wild carrot is blooming fine. Snaps are fine, and so are penstemon, lavender, Jupiter's Beard, sunflowers, all kinds of rudbeckia and coneflower. Storm will be fine except for the wind, which will probably blow over my nasturtium pot on a stand. Diane

These photos were all taken in the last few days. Below Angel Face was eaten way down by the deer in early June, so she had her spring flush in July.

Second Angel Face still not planted but watered plenty. Sits on the patio in 5 gallon nursery pot.

Current coneflowers which are all over the place. Being strangled by a hops vine, you'll see.

Current Orange Dude. He abides.

Rudbeckia volunteers with natural hybrids showing interesting coloring. Everywhere I want them, and I don't plant a one. Just drop some seed heads where you want new plants.

One of my current sunflowers and the bees love the pollen.

I forgot the wild carrot both Dara, the purple one, and the white variety. They are volunteers. Diane

Note blue Rozanne Cranesbill in background. I grow seven or eight, and all will bloom until hard frost.

Diane - we've got smoke now. Drat. But, at least we're getting a MAJOR drop in temperature. 73F!! I love your new Angel Face...what a bloomer!!! Who couldn't love that Face? :) :) Great picture of the bee on the sunflower. And I love your coneflowers...they would look so good with your Angel Face.

Thanks, Carol. I'm sorry about the smoke up your way. You just get your water system fixed, and now smoke. Bah. Our storm was a total fizzle and no rain. For a while the breeze, not wind, blew in cooler air, which was nice, but then it warmed up. My daughter moved a gazillion pots up on the deck to protect them from the nonexistent wind, and now I've got to move them back down to the patio tomorrow. What a pain for nothing. Have you ever considered growing Angel Face? She has a wonderful scent. But she does black spot, so I guess that might not be good. I agree that she would look good with coneflowers. Hmmm. Eastern Oregon is the big smoker right now with the biggest fire. Ranchers had to move all their cattle to get them out of harm's way. What a mess. Onward to the summer thread where your beautiful photos are posted.

Abbaye de Cluny is doing well during the heat and is huge. This is a Meilland Romantica rose.

Ascot is having a flush right now.

Extreme close up of a very tiny insect lurking inside an opening sunflower. Note sunflower hairs and what looks like claws. I wonder what the function of these are.

Another close up of a bumble bee gathering sunflower pollen Bumbles love sunflowers.

Oh, good grief. I'd already posted the bumble bee. Sorry.

Tamora, an Austin, from a while back.

Looking good Sam! :-)

Diane - I actually got to go out around 5 p.m. for a few hours. The smoke had cleared. So it was a lovely evening. :) :) You didn't get any rain. A gazillion pots...sounds like my deck. lol As to Angel Face, no, I've never thought of getting Angel Face. It doesn't get very good ratings on hmf. I think you're one of the very few who can grow that one so well. :) And where do the cattle go? Ooooh...I love your Abbaye de Cluny (such a hard word to spell and pronounce)...especially the first pic. And your Ascot is a beauty...what a rose!! It's so strange to see a close up of a sunflower plant. Ooooh...I love the last 2 Tamora pics!!! Tamora is a rose you can't find anywhere.

Sam - yes, stay safe. It's so aggravating to have smoke all summer. I love your Prairie Sunrise. And your Easy Does It blooms are so vivid!

Our family is now evacuated from a wildfire close to our house. It looks like our property will likely be fine- but it definitely puts things in perspective. Grasshoppers and Japanese beetles and heat don’t look so bad with the risk of fire looming. Haha🤣

I hope you all are staying safe out there and taking time to stop and smell the roses. 🌹

Sam, Sorry to hear you are evacuated. I thought of you when I saw that fire pop up. With 4 going along the front range and no weather events to spark them one does have to wonder what is going on. Glad you are all safe.

Sorry to hear you’ve been evacuated Sam. Really hope everything ends up okay for you and everyone else.

And yeah, you gotta wonder what’s causing these fires. The lake shore one is already reported as being human caused, and it seems likely that the others were as well, whether that be freak accidents, carelessness, or intentional.

Sam, I hope you and your family are ok. Sorry to hear of the evacuation. As for the grasshopper and beetles, I can relate to some extent. This year, we had the dreaded cicadas - omg - they were here in the 1,000's! All of my plants, trees, all over! It was unbelievable! They are gone now for another 17 years. My family, friends and coworkers all have stories of how the cicadas either got in their cars, the house, their hair - one landed on my finger and I screamed and dropped my phone! Took me 20 minutes before I found it. Oh, well, life goes on and so does another garden season. Stay safe.

Good Luck Sam! Hoping the best for you & your family!

We're thinking of you Sam - let us know how things work out and we're hoping you and your family and home will be fine.

Cynthia

Sam -- I'm thinking happy thoughts for you and I LOVE your big picture photo and philosophy. Hope you are back in your house. Maybe the smoke chased off the bugs?

Thank you all for the kind words. We are back home after the evacuations were lifted, and all is well here. We evacuated with all our animals, including our 19 hens, and it seems the hopper population exploded in their absence. Guess my chickens really were making a difference in the population. Now they’re back to work. Anyways , we are home and the fire is nearly out. I’m really looking forward to fall and a nice cool down. I hope you all are well!

Go chickens! Sam, I'm so glad your home, Now back to gardening and normalcy. We're currently pretty smoked in. The air is not good at all. Diane