Vegie Garden under attack. Help!!

[galina]

Hi all. This is my first year doing a vegie/herb garden. I live in Central FL, so I am just now seeing how many different critters we have here, figure the battle wont be easy.

In my garden i have tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, lettuce, cabage, radishes, pepers, carrots, beets, zuccini, watermelon, chive, garlic, parsley, dill, cilantro, mint, basil, potatoes. Think thats it. I'm just trying a bit of everything.

Well this AM I went out there to water and found a ton of little grasshoppers/crickets all over the place munchin on my still very young seedling/plants. They got a lot of the beets. They are black with yellow or red stripe on the top about 1/2in long, dont know exact name for em. Seems like they just hatched maybe?

Well, i got a few of them, the rest got away. I am trying to keep to more organic/natural methods and perfer not to use pesticides unless i absolutely have to. What can i do to keep these away from my garden??? Oh and also 2 of my tomatoe plants have brown holes in them. Not sure if the hoppers got to them too, or is that something else.

Any other advice/tips would be great, especially from any FL gardeners who know how to deal w/all the critters here.

[Thomas W]

I've read that Yellow Jackets attack grasshoppers and feeds larvae to their young. Haven't seen them in action though ;-) But not the kindest insects to have in your garden.

[Newt]

Galina, I feel your pain. A few years ago I had purchased several conifers and had the pots waiting for planting. I went out to water them one morning and hundreds of grasshoppers came out of the soil of the pots. In less then a week all the plants were dead!

Here's grasshoppers of Florida. See if you can id which you have.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IN010

You should also find this helpful.
http://entnem.ufl.edu/ghopper/ghopper.html

Newt