How to Keep Grasshoppers Away From Tomato Plants

Allow your cat to roam around your yard. According to Golden Harvest Organics, cats will attack the grasshoppers near your tomato plants, and keep their population in your yard at a minimum.

Get some chickens. You will benefit from the fresh eggs, and the chickens will earn their keep by eating your grasshoppers. Pest Wall advises that keeping any type of poultry will cut the grasshopper population in your garden.

Use a grasshopper bait that contains Nosema locustae. The grasshoppers eat this and become so sick they die. The good news is that the bait is safe to use around pets and small children, and according to GHO one treatment can last four to six years.

Set up a few bird feeders near your tomato garden. Birds are natural predators to the grasshopper, and will eat them.

Place molasses and water in a glass jar and give it a stir. Dig a hole in the ground near your tomato plants. The hole only needs to be as deep and wide as the jar. Set the jar in it, keeping the lid off. The grasshoppers will jump in the jar because of the smell of the molasses, notes GHO. They will then get stuck and drown.

Plant a natural barrier. Grasshoppers do not like the smell of peas, calendula or the herb cilantro, according to GHO. Interplant cilantro with your tomatoes, and not only do you discourage hoppers, you have the start to a tasty salsa.