How to Control Crickets in Your Lawn & Garden?

Crickets are quite disadvantageous at night and pose a serious threat to plants and grass, thus making it quite hard to regulate them in your garden and lawn. Mole and Black Field crickets are some of the popular species known to cause havoc on lawns in Australia, damaging both the looks and the health of garden spaces. It is clear to keep your grass green and your plants growing well you need to know what they are up to, see the early signs that they are around, and employ good prevention and control strategies. This is a comprehensive article on what you need to know about controlling crickets in gardens and lawns.

Knowing Crickets and How They Affect Gardens and Lawns

Crickets are members of the Orthopteran order, including katydids, locusts, and grasshoppers. The two main species harming lawns and gardens in Australia are mole crickets and black field crickets.

Mole crickets are burrowing insects that frequently cause noticeable damage to garden plants and lawns. They reside in both vertical and lateral burrows. Mole crickets are well-known for their loud mating songs, especially after rain. They can dig long tunnels that harm grassroots and leave unattractive brown patches behind.
In contrast to Mole crickets, Black Field crickets are aboveground feeders that eat grasses, delicate fruit and young plants. They are widespread in Australian residential gardens, coming out at night to feed and hiding in crevices or under debris during the day.

Identifying Cricket Damage

It’s critical to identify cricket damage early on to avoid serious damage to your garden or lawn:

Mole Cricket Injuries:

Due to tunnelling, which damages grass roots and can give the appearance of sick grass, there are brown patches on the lawn.
Damaged or uprooted seedlings and chewed roots.
Visible caves on the top of the earth.

Black Field Cricket Injuries:

Fruits and leaves that have been chewed are frequently missing pieces.
Stems of seedlings and young plants that have been cut off close to the ground.
Lawns and garden beds with dead or damaged sections.

Managing Crickets: Crucial Actions to Safeguard Your Garden and Lawn

Monitoring, direct removal, natural deterrents, and, if necessary, chemical control are all essential for effective cricket control. This is a detailed instruction on how to deal with cricket-related problems.

1. Keep an eye out for crickets

You must regularly check on your garden. Because crickets are most active at night, you might want to check your garden and lawn with a torch or head torch after nightfall. Check for the crickets, any damaged plants, or indications of tunnelling. Effective management of crickets depends on early capture and control of small populations.

2. Catch and Dispose of Mechanical Control

Crickets can be handled squashed or submerged in a pail of soapy water if you see them at night. When cricket populations are still low, this strategy works especially well. If you don’t want to handle crickets, you might spread wet sacks on the lawn at night. Since crickets frequently hide beneath these sacks, gathering and getting rid of them in the morning is simple.

3. Preventive Actions

The best defence against cricket damage to your landscape is prevention. Here are some doable strategies to reduce crickets’ attraction to your garden and lawn:

Fill Soil Cracks: During the day, crickets, particularly Black Field crickets, hide in soil cracks. Cricket shelters can be decreased by filling up lawn fissures and maintaining healthy soil.
Healthy grass Maintenance: Use the right fertiliser and watering schedule to keep your grass as robust and healthy as possible. A robust, dense lawn is less vulnerable to cricket damage and more resilient overall.
Flooding the lawn with soapy water helps push mole crickets to the surface, making capturing them simpler. This approach can assist in determining the amount of an infestation and is helpful for early intervention.

4. Natural Predators

An eco-friendly method of managing cricket populations is to promote natural predators in your yard. Among the natural predators of crickets are:

Crickets are preyed upon by various bird species, particularly in the early morning and late afternoon.
Frogs and lizards can be useful companions in your garden because they are naturally adept at hunting crickets.
Tiny parasitic wasps and predatory beetles: Some wasps naturally regulate populations by laying their eggs on or within crickets.

Cricket populations can be managed without chemicals by creating an environment that draws these helpful animals.

5. Chemical Management: Exercise Caution

Chemical control might be necessary if cricket infestations get out of hand. A lawn insecticide like Yates Advanced Lawn Insect Killer that contains beta-cyfluthrin may work well against mole crickets. To reduce any unexpected impacts on beneficial insects and the environment, carefully read the product’s instructions and only use as prescribed. Utilises chemical treatments as a last resort, although reapplication might be required if the infestation continues.

Conclusion

Monitoring, preventive maintenance, natural deterrents, and, if necessary, chemical intervention are all essential to keep crickets out of your lawn and garden. It’s critical to notice cricket damage early; check your garden often, especially at night, to spot any symptoms as soon as they arise.

Keep in mind that the optimal strategy is balanced. Effective cricket management can be achieved with the least negative environmental impact by promoting natural predators, keeping your lawn healthy, and starting with manual methods. If chemical control is required, carefully apply treatments that only target the problematic regions. You can have a flourishing garden and a lush, cricket-free lawn with perseverance and the appropriate techniques.