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Post by Mumsey on Apr 27, 2024 18:50:51 GMT -5
How will this affect gardening? The Cicadas don’t eat gardens but the other locusts do. What do you expect in your area? From what I read most of Iowa will be ok. Illinois and Indiana don’t look so good.
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Post by claude on Apr 29, 2024 9:02:11 GMT -5
From what I understand they are sap drinkers not leaf eaters and they dont bite. Pretty fascinating insects when you think about how long they stay underground to all emerge at once 15+ years later.? They do like young shoots on plantings. I haven't seen one yet… Grasshoppers…ugh now thats a different pest.
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Post by breezygardener on Apr 29, 2024 16:44:54 GMT -5
The emerging adults won't damage your plants by eating them, but the females will by making slits in twigs & thin branches & laying their eggs in the slits. Those slits can do a lot of damage, especially in young trees, as the twigs/branches usually split & die - a condition called "flagging". While the cicada larvae are underground, they do feed on tree roots, but no evidence has been determined that such feeding harms trees in any way.
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Post by Mumsey on Apr 29, 2024 16:51:41 GMT -5
The locusts that are related to grasshoppers are the ones that eat gardens. I can't imagine trillions of cicadas though. Crunchy.
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Post by breezygardener on Apr 29, 2024 17:25:40 GMT -5
When we had our cicada invasion several years ago, they were horrible. It began in the mornings with a sound like 1,000 lawnmowers, & you couldn't step outside without them landing on & climbing all over you. Argghh! Besides watering the garden, the only time I spent outside was to whack them off our young Pink dogwood & our equally young "Louisa" weeping crabapple. Both trees suffered damage that took 2-3 years to recover from. I thought for a while that we were going to lose the dogwood.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Apr 29, 2024 19:10:03 GMT -5
Aren't there recipes for them out there??? ![(rofl)](//storage.proboards.com/6160292/images/ME8dXZmcAFURModTzFH5.gif)
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Post by desertwoman on Apr 29, 2024 20:19:44 GMT -5
Looks like we are spared. No cicadas/locusts here. That doesn't mean something else won't get to us. Just haven't heard anything. Yet.
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Post by breezygardener on Apr 29, 2024 22:46:29 GMT -5
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Post by pepperhead212 on Apr 29, 2024 23:19:06 GMT -5
I wouldn't say surprisingly... ![wink](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Post by Mumsey on Apr 30, 2024 5:12:57 GMT -5
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Post by pepperhead212 on Apr 30, 2024 9:34:02 GMT -5
Mumsey Fortunately, for whatever reason, the locust aren't really that common around here. A few here and there, and certainly not the overlap of the two types, like in Illinois and Indiana.
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