[Arid_gardener] Question from Home-Hort WWW page

[drjean at cox.net]

Jean Hodgson
85635
drjean at cox.net

I am just beginning a vegetable garden in an newly enclosed 7 ft. tall chain link fence (30' x 30').  It is protected on the ground near the outside of the fence and a foot above the fence with chicken wire, and underneath the gate is a strip of cement.  I will later put on bird netting.  You would think this would protect the garden from animal predators.  But I forgot about the grasshoppers!!!!

The garden is in a remote area about 12 miles southeast of Tombstone, in Sunset Western Gardening Zone 10, and it is near a sacaton meadow that during the summer is filled with grasshoppers 3 or more inches long.

The fence will not stop the grasshoppers, will it?  Will my garden be decimated as after a horde of locusts descend? Is there anything I can do to protect against these insects?

I also plan to plant artichokes outside the fence along the sacaton meadow.  Will grasshoppers get the artichokes, too?

Thanks.