A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Cicadas

Is there something we should be doing to protect our gardens from these yucky bugs? Are they like locus who eat the plants? Just wondering if I should put an armadillo over the beautiful things growing in my garden.

I have read the only thing they really cause damage to is young trees. Many people are bandaging or wrapping their new tree's trunks to keep the cicadas off them around here.

Thank you Chrissy. That really puts my mind at ease.

How far up do these critter's go???

I do not believe I have ever seen them up
this way in WNY!!!!

Just curious???

Weezie

Weezie ~

We have them here every summer!
The noise is maddening even when it isn't the 17th year!

What surprised me this past Saturday, is that every year I plant my mother's rock garden for mother's day. They have a crab apple tree in the middle of this garden and it usually has a bunch of the cicada shells ( EWWWWWWWW ) stuck on the trunk.
This time there wasn't a single shell -
even though this is supposed to be the 17th year.
What's up with that???

I swear, I have never seen one,

Although I should keep my mouth shut,
as I'll probably get them now,
cause I've said something!

Weezie

Maybe they don't like my area?????

I am the only one happy for them to come? They are mother natures pruners and food supply for birds and other critter!!! This has been going on for thousands of years and somehow plants manage to survive...
try looking at the awww of what these little guys are doing!! and how they have survives 17 years under ground.. like so see any human do that!

Suzanne , I keep telling everyone where I live how amazing it is that they come up every 17 years like clock work......It's really something when you think about it.....BUT, nope....I'm not happy they are here.....I know they don't hurt, but do they have to have the red eyes????? I was wondering about that actually....why do they have red eyes and not black?? They are blind aren't they????? I'm fine until I see those red eyes staring at me..... Then again, I'm not a bug person....most of them freak me out a lot!!! I'd fill my birdfeeders every single day if I knew it would stop me from seeing the cicadas......

Oh, one more question....will the 17 year brood eventually keep spreading out across the US???? Or will they stay in the same areas all the time? I think the west coast really should have a little of this too..... :p

Hello.. Not blind... people have different colors of eyes, so why cant bugs?

I don't know if they will spread, would take along time being they don't come up so often. Also I am sure our use of pesticides have impacted their populations and also global warming. I would think they would come sooner being soil temp is what tells them to come up.

It funny how today society is so afraid of harmless bugs that we will poisons ourselves with pesticides to kill a harmless creature.....

I never use pesticides.......I'm not much into chemicals really at all......I think it's strange though they have red eyes, just kind of freaks me out a bit..... But, I'm an admitted scaredy cat......I think my dislike of bugs and such stems back to when my sister had a tarantula as a pet and used to make me hold it.....I think it scarred me for life......

This rain we've been having has seemed to make them not so bad yet......

Why all the concern over these bugs? They will, as Chrissy and Buglady said, cause a very small amount of damage to new growth, but nothing drastic, heck as a kid(poor) we played with the lil shells, built lil fences and had a lil herd of them.....maybe too much information! I find the singing quite pleasing

I'm not really concerned about any damage they would do, and I know they don't bite/sting or hurt anyone......I just plain out don't like bugs......lol Especially such big ones, when there are so many of them. Well not quite so many here yet, but 5 miles away they are really bad......They just make me squeamish.....I don't have a bug phobia(except maybe spiders), but these cicadas are just so big and ugly......What can I say .....I'm a girly girl.....that sounds very childlike.....um, I'm a girly woman.....that doesn't work either....lol

Loz, that is fine to be scared of bugs, one of my less favorite bugs are those darn "walking sticks",devil's darning needle, whatever they are called, EWWWWW, down in Mo. we had em BIG,Laura don't like spiders,so I gotta watch out for my garden spider! and for phobia's and things that scare me...Those Flyin' Monkeys in the Wizard of Oz...Still scare the Ce-rap outa me

I saw that LOZ!!! :p

Phil, I had a walking stick in my garden for days last year......they are really big, but they are one bug that I actually think is pretty cool....By the way, the flying monkeys always creep me out a little too.....

Saw a pic in the paper yesterday of a guys wall--he lives 20 miles from us--and it was literally crawling with hundreds on cicadas.....

Still not too bad here yet, I had my one close encounter with one and found a few shells but other than that I haven't noticed any on my trees.....I keep checking but none really yet.

I must have been living under a rock for the last 40 years and missed all this. When are they coming? Shells ?? What am I looking for <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" /> , I have never heard about this. Arent they supposed to last only a short time above ground?