| Key Takeaways |
|---|
| • Act early and naturally: Garlic, neem oil, and soap sprays work best on young nymphs in spring and early summer. • Make your yard unwelcoming: Regular mowing, tilling, weeding, and grasshopper-repellent plants disrupt their habitat and breeding. • Invite their predators: Birds, toads, lizards, and beneficial insects are a free, ongoing line of defense against grasshoppers. |
Grasshoppers are some of the most destructive pests worldwide, targeting grass, overtaking gardens, and damaging crops and plants. This guide explains how to get rid of grasshoppers in your yard so you can enjoy a pest-free property year-round.
Below, you’ll learn what grasshoppers look like, the damage they cause, and the best ways to send them packing, including regular lawn mowing to keep them from settling in.
If you’d rather skip the work, Lawn Love’s lawn mowing service keeps your grass short and grasshopper-free.
What are grasshoppers?
Grasshoppers are medium to large plant-eating insects with strong hind legs built for jumping. They live in grasslands and semi-arid regions worldwide, and they lay their eggs in late summer or early fall, preferring dry soil and warm temperatures.
Grasshoppers feed mostly during the day but will also eat at night. These usually solitary insects gather only to mate or migrate in search of food, and when they swarm, they can quickly overwhelm natural controls, which is when early action matters most.
Ed Dolshun, pest expert and business development and technical director at AP&G/Catchmaster in Bayonne, New Jersey, says catching them early is important.
“By the time most people notice them, grasshoppers are flying adults that shrug off most treatments. Control is far easier in late spring, when they’re small, wingless nymphs near where they hatched,” Dolshun says.
Populations multiply quickly in hot, dry summer weather. When that happens, some species change color and form large swarms known as locusts.
You can identify grasshoppers by a few consistent traits:
- Color: Usually green, gray, or brown.
- Size: Between 0.5 and 2.5 inches long, depending on the species, with females larger than males.
- Legs: Strong hind legs that can leap up to 30 inches.
- Features: Large eyes, chewing mouthparts, wings, and short antennae.
- Nymphs: Smaller and wingless, with a white color when freshly hatched.
Grasshoppers can eat almost 16 times their body weight in a single day. Left to its own devices, a large grasshopper population can devastate a vegetable garden in a matter of hours and cause significant damage to the surrounding ecosystem.
Some telltale signs of grasshopper presence or damage include:
- Chewed grass and ragged leaves, with damage starting at the leaf edge and working inward
- Large missing portions of leaves, vegetables, and fruit
- Holes in your shrubs
- Chirping sounds, which grasshoppers make by rubbing their legs or wings together
- Visual sightings, especially in the warm part of the day
Read more:
- Signs of Lawn Pest Damage vs. Disease vs. Drought Stress
- Common Summer Lawn Pests: 12 Types and How to Get Rid of Them
How to get rid of grasshoppers in your yard
If you’re a homeowner who likes spending time outdoors tending to your yard, you’re probably not on friendly terms with jumping grasshoppers. Take a closer look at these helpful ways to repel grasshoppers and enjoy spending time outdoors again.
Use natural pesticides
When a large grasshopper population is decimating your garden, spraying your plants or lawn with a natural pesticide is an effective do-it-yourself (DIY) option. Try any of the following for grasshopper control:
- Make a garlic spray by mixing minced garlic with water, bringing the mixture to a boil, and allowing it to sit overnight. Then, add one part mixture and three parts water to a spray bottle and apply it to the affected areas in your yard.
- Add flour to a salt shaker and dust it over your plants or lawn. When the flour comes into contact with grasshopper saliva, it forms a glue that seals the garden pests’ mouths.
- Spray a neem oil solution all over your yard in spring or early summer, when grasshopper nymphs are just hatching and vulnerable to insecticides. To make it, mix 1 teaspoon of neem oil with 2 cups of water and a drop of dish soap. The neem tree has been used to fight pest infestations for hundreds of years, but this method isn’t a guaranteed success and may work better for some gardeners than others.
- Prepare a blend of one part apple cider vinegar, three parts water, and 5 or 6 grams of soap granular flakes. Pour it into a sprayer and go to town in your yard.
Read more:
Till your soil to destroy their eggs
Tilling turns over the top layer of soil, exposing buried grasshopper eggs to the sun, predators, and cold so fewer survive to hatch. Till in early spring, with a second round in late summer to early fall when females lay their eggs in dry soil.
For the grasshoppers, this means a disturbed life cycle. For you, it means fewer headaches and a cleaner yard.
Try store-bought grasshopper baits
Store-bought baits are pellets coated with naturally occurring microbes (like the fungi Nosema locustae and Beauveria bassiana) that grasshoppers eat and die from, without harming pets or pollinators. Spread them over problem areas and wait for the insects to ingest them.
Dolshun agrees that nosema locustae is the most effective bait to use.
“Grasshoppers eat it, sicken and spread it to others, and it’s safe for people, pets and beneficials. It works best on young nymphs and is slow, so it’s a long-term tool that performs better across larger areas than in one small backyard,” he says.
A considerable dent in grasshopper numbers should occur within 14 days.
Mow your lawn
Grasshoppers love hiding and laying eggs in tall grass, so mowing goes a long way in keeping your garden grasshopper-free.
“Tall, unmanaged grass next to lush, watered plants gives them shelter and food. Yards bordering fields or vacant lots get hit hardest, especially in dry years,” Dolshun says. “Mow borders, till bare patches in fall, and keep a mowed buffer around the garden.”
During the growing season, cut your grass once a week to have a pest-free, vibrant lawn that your neighbors will envy.
Pull weeds to remove their food and cover
Weeds give grasshoppers both an early food source and a place to hide and breed, so pulling them makes your yard far less attractive to the pests. Staying on top of weeding also keeps your garden growing healthy and vibrant.
Encourage natural grasshopper predators
An effective way to control grasshoppers is to foster an environment ideal for natural predators. To do this:
- Build nesting sites for birds such as cardinals, orioles, swallows, and guinea fowl. They like snacking on grasshoppers, which is why attracting them to your yard is a good idea. Birds require a clean water source and trellises for perching, so add them to your yard.
- Consider adding ponds or fountains to your yard to attract toads, frogs, praying mantises, and dragonflies.
- Add logs or rock cairns to your landscape and watch lizards, spiders, and beetles make an appearance. These creatures can help rid your yard of grasshopper nymphs hatching in spring and summer.
- Parasitic and paper wasps as well as robber flies naturally prey on grasshoppers. To keep these beneficial insects coming back to your yard, make plants such as coriander, dill, clover, mustard, phacelia, and cosmos available year-round. They’re an excellent pollen source for your helpful, winged friends.
Read more: Benefits of Attracting Birds to Your Yard
Plant varieties grasshoppers hate
Adding plants and flowers grasshoppers dislike is an easy way to make your garden less appealing to them. Grasshoppers hate the smell and taste of these varieties:
- Sage
- Garlic
- Jasmine
- Lilacs
- Juniper
- Moss rose
- Artemisia
- Forsythia
Mix them with your vegetables and plants to disturb the habitat grasshoppers enjoy and hopefully keep them away.
Conversely, avoid planting crops grasshoppers find delicious. These may be:
- Corn
- Wheat
- Onions
- Lettuce
- Sunflowers
Cover your most vulnerable plants
Shield the plants grasshoppers love most, such as lettuce and leafy vegetables, with floating row covers, a lightweight fabric that lets in light and water while blocking pests. This physical barrier keeps them from reaching tender foliage in the first place.
FAQs
Grasshoppers aren’t dangerous to people. They don’t carry diseases that affect humans, and while a large one can deliver a minor pinch if handled, they don’t have venom or a true bite that poses a health risk. Their main threat is to plants, not to you or your pets.
Most grasshoppers live for about a year, including the egg stage. After hatching in spring, nymphs mature into adults over roughly 1 to 2 months, and adults typically survive through the warmer months before dying off with the first hard frosts of fall.
Yes, a spray of a few drops of dish soap in water kills grasshoppers on contact by coating and suffocating them, working best on young nymphs. Test it on a few plants first, since strong concentrations can scorch tender foliage.
Grasshoppers are herbivores that eat grass, leaves, stems, flowers, and seeds, and they occasionally feed on dead insects for protein.
Let Lawn Love keep grasshoppers off your lawn
With grasshoppers at work, your yard can become a wasteland in no time flat.
Regular mowing and tidy lawn care are two of the best ways to keep these pests from settling in. When you’d rather not spend your weekend behind a mower, Lawn Love’s local lawn care providers can keep your grass short and grasshopper-free for you.
Read more:
Main Photo Credit: Pierre Hiard | Canva Pro
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