“Do you have any tips for dealing with the locusts that have already started to arise from the ground this summer where I live in southern Ohio? My garden plans are currently on hold until I can decide if there is a way to protect my plants.”
This reader asks about the “ locust tree , ” which is a term often informally used to refer to two very unlike insect : the periodical cicala and a hopper - eccentric locust .
Cicadas Are Not Locusts
Scientifically speaking , the term locust tree only denotes a number of shortly - horned hopper specie found throughout the world , which with the swarming behavior that can cause pregnant agrarian legal injury , conjure up images of the biblical pestis . The timing of the inquiry and geographic location assist ferret out which type of locust the reader is refer to .
When this question was take in previous May , only periodical cicadas would have emerged from the ground , as full - grown adult grasshoppers do not appear until mid- to late summertime in Ohio and the Midwest , so what she ’s really asking is how does she protect her crops from the comer of a large brood of17 class periodical cicadas ( Brood V)forecasted for a number of State in the Midwest and Northeast this year .
Cicadas & Your Vegetable Garden
The great news is that cicada do not feed onvegetable garden . In fact , adult cicadas fee sparingly on works sap , not touching leaves , vegetables or fruit . The lifespan of these adult cicadas is quite short — only about a month long . The adult cicala ’ primary mission is to aviate around in an almost drunken fashion while searching for mates and laying their orchis — they do little else .
While your garden is completely safe , when large population of cicada are present , these noisy louse can injure decorative andfruit treesin your landscape . harm takes place when the females slice up open small - diam branches to lay their bollock , often causing the bark to discase and girdling the branch . For younger trees and smaller plants , cicada damage may be fatal , but for mature trees , it ’s often cosmetic ( known as flagging ) . The one exclusion is in commercial orchards , where heavy cicada swag on mature fruiting Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree can lower harvesting rates .
Protecting Your Trees
There are no organic sprays that are recommended to verify cicala populations around the sign of the zodiac or garden . To protect valuable and vulnerable new trees , householder with heavy periodic cicada population can consider utilizing netting to prevent female cicadas from set about to put their eggs on certain trees and industrial plant .
