Try Tulle to Keep Out Grasshoppers

It’s getting pretty hard to keep plants alive with hundredplus degree heat. It’s even harder when a plague of grasshoppers invades your land.

These critters seem to really like the taste of our pepper plants. My wife Janessa came up with a possible solution that seems to be working – tulle.

If you have seen the movie “The Godfather,” you might recall the scene in Vito Corleone’s garden. Hanging above his tomato plants is a canopy made of what appears to be tulle – a kind of lightweight fabric netting often used in wedding gowns and other formal ladies wear.

The Godfather’s tulle canopy serves more to shade the plants from the harsh sun rather than protect them from insects. But the fabric can be used for both purposes.

To be honest, I didn’t know what tulle was until Janessa explained it to me. She sent me to the store to buy a few yards of it. I lingered uncomfortably in the fabric section, waiting for an attendant. A nice elderly lady was also waiting for fabric. She asked me if I sewed. Awkwardly, I said no.

I recalled the episode of “King of the Hill” when all of Hank’s buddies make fun of him for using a sewing machine. Confidently, Hank tells them that he’s re-upholstering a seat, and that upholstery is one of the traditional manly crafts.

Still, I felt like a little boy going into the ladies restroom with my mom.

I waited 15 minutes and the attendant never came. I called Janessa to let her know and got the heck out of there as fast as I could.

A few days later Janessa went to the store and made the purchase. She then set about installing it in our garden. She made some short sticks out of wood and stuck them in the ground in pairs like tee-pee poles down the rows. She then placed upside-down red Solo cups on top of each stick to prevent them from ripping the fabric. After that, the draped the tulle over the supports down the legnth of the rows. Finally, she buried the sides of the tulle under the mulch in our garden, which created a tunnel. This prevents the wind from blowing it away. It also seals the row from any flying or hopping bugs that try to munch on our plants.

The holes in the tulle are large enough to allow water through to the soil. They’re small enough to keep out bugs like grasshoppers. Besides grasshoppers, it seems to also keep out stink bugs and squash bugs. So far, it appears to be working quite well. It also keeps out benficial insects such as lady bugs and bees, so keep that in mind. We’re only using it to cover our peppers and eggplants, which are wind-pollinated.

In other outdoors news, a reader from La Grange wrote to me this week about cicadas and copperhead snakes.

“Cicadas are coming out now and that means more copperhead snakes,” he said. “Turns out cicadas are probably the copperheads favorite food.”

Indeed, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife, copperheads are known to be particularly fond of cicadas, as referenced in this passage from a 2016 article in TPW Magazine:

“Like other pit vipers, copperheads are equipped with retractable hypodermic fangs that deliver hemotoxic venom, so their arsenal is well suited to subduing most prey. Why would such a well-armed predator bother to dine on cicadas? For the same reason we eat fast food: It’s cheap and easy. Cicadas can occur in high densities, and they offer no defense of their fat-and-protein-filled bodies other than a crunchy exoskeleton. These snakes are selective about their prey, ambushing newly emerged cicadas before their exoskeletons have had time to harden.”

The reader also noted the cicada’s noisy song, which some people find annoying, especially the song of the giant cicada (Quesada gigas). I prefer the critter’s common name in Spansih “chicharra grande.”

“Sometimes it sounds like your neighbors alarm system is going off,” the reader said. “I’m guessing most people don’t know it’s the loudest insect in the Western Hemisphere and we are about as far north as they get.”

Janessa, who grew up in South Texas, says she and her siblings used to catch them as children and pretend to shave – the fast-beating wings and the vibrations they make somewhat resemble an electric razor.