Garden Strangelove - or - How I learned to stop worrying and love grasshoppers

By John Hershey:

In the hard-charging workplaces of America, a popular motivational mantra is “Failure is not an option.”

At least it was back when I was in that world. One reason I’m not there anymore is that in my experience, that motto is not true at all. For me, failure was not only an option, it felt like a constant looming daily possibility. So I decamped as soon as I could for the less judgmental field of self-employment.

The field I really wanted to be in, though, was the one behind my house: the garden. Now, at 60, even though I am way too young (and way, way too financially insecure) to retire, I have the freedom to spend a lot of time there.

Grasshopper on Black Eyed Susan. Photo: Idelle Fisher

I love gardening because it’s so different from the workplace. In the garden failure actually is not an option. Not in the corporate sense that we have to work really hard to ensure success. But because no matter what happens, it is just not possible to fail in a garden.

Here's what I mean. Last year, grasshoppers obliterated my garden, consuming everything except the tomato foliage. I pulled up the garlic bulbs just in time, as they mowed down the top growth. We ate a lot of spicy pasta sauce last summer, but not much else.

It was quite disheartening. But gardeners are never discouraged enough to give up, so this season I planted an even bigger garden, with the gardener’s eternal optimism that something would be different. Maybe we had enough cold winter nights to freeze the grasshopper eggs. Or maybe they’re cyclical like cicadas and wouldn’t bother us for another 17 years. (Garden-level optimism requires a robust capacity for self-delusion.)

This spring, I had hope. A few grasshoppers here and there, but not the clouds of locusts rising before my every step like last year’s biblical plague. But then, one day in June, as I was taking a big pepper seedling out of its pot to transplant, an impudent grasshopper landed right on one of its leaves. The deluge had begun. “Dude,” I muttered sadly. “You can’t even wait until it’s in the ground? You’re not called a pepper-hopper. Why can’t you hop on the grass like you’re supposed to?”

Was this a sign that the garden would “fail” again? I didn’t care and kept going all day, loosening soil and spreading compost and planting. Why? Because even if I get no chiles or beans or squash again this year, I still spent a beautiful late-spring Friday in my favorite place, getting a full body workout of shovel curls, broadfork rows, raking core crunches, and planting squats. And my phone, which I blissfully ignored the whole time, later praised me for putting in over 18,000 steps.

If I did all this in a gym, I would get the same exercise with no free vitamin D and no possibility of an eventual harvest. So even if I never reaped anything I sowed, it wouldn’t be a waste of time.

Not that I didn’t care whether my family or the Acrididae family would end up eating all the veggies. But I hoped to avoid yet another popular cliché, the one defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. For several years I battled the grasshoppers with all the standard ineffective weapons – netting, flour, neem oil, and the most absurd recommendation of all: “hand picking”. (Sure, after that I’ll mow the lawn by individually trimming each blade with scissors.) As an organic gardener, the only escalation I didn’t resort to was the popular product EcoBran, which sounds like a healthy breakfast cereal but actually contains the toxic pesticide carbaryl.  So every season I lost the war, these tactics yielding only stress and anger.

Grasshopper on Coneflower. Photo: Idelle Fisher

This year I’ve changed my strategy. My epiphany occurred when I was out there watching the insects methodically devour my plants. I used to take out my rage by karate-chopping a few individual pests away. This made no difference, of course. I was just venting frustration. As I wound up to swing at one particular hopper lounging on a broccoli floret, I hesitated when we made eye contact. With the big round lenses of its eyes, it seemed to have the bespectacled intelligence of a Jiminy Cricket. We looked at each other intently, and I had a realization. “We’re not so different, you and I,” I said. “We really want the same things: to hang out in the garden, eat good fresh food, and complete our life cycle.” After hating grasshoppers as a group for so long, I suddenly found it hard to hate them as individuals, and I knew that hurting one other living creature in the garden would only make me feel bad and no less helpless.

So this season, I’m trying diplomacy instead of pointless violence. It was actually the grasshoppers who made the opening offer in our peace talks. By destroying everything but my tomato plants last season, they were staking out a savvy negotiating position. It’s as if they know tomatoes are every gardener’s favorite crop and graciously allowed me to keep them.

The grasshoppers seemed to be proposing a grand bargain in which we each get what we need. Next year I will plant the cool-season vegetables even earlier, before the nymphs hatch. Under frost cloth, they can grow through the spring, and I’ll harvest enough broccoli, beets, and kale for my family and me to eat and preserve before the insects hit their stride. If they are willing to wait until I take my fair share of food, I’ll leave plenty for them. “Patience, young grasshopper!” In return, they will break down the tough foliage and poop out a layer of nutrient-dense frass, improving the soil for the tomatoes that they agree to let me grow next. For a nonverbal negotiation, I think we have reached a mutually beneficial arrangement. Even now, as they enjoy the brassica remnants in peace, the grasshoppers are leaving my eggplants alone too, in an apparent confidence-building measure.

But will I have to give up growing beans, squash, and cucumbers? In a secret protocol to our treaty, I reserve the right to grow warm-season crops in containers and small raised beds in the front yard, which the grasshoppers have not yet discovered.

Just as I remember from the Kung Fu TV show I watched as a kid, the Grasshopper ends up teaching the “Master” a lesson. I thought I was the master of my garden, but I was not in control. The cause of my suffering was wanting things to be different, but instead of trying to change something I can’t, I can adapt and live in harmony with nature. Another advantage of not working for someone else is that I’m free to set my own criteria for success. To me, it means getting to enjoy my time in the garden again by letting go of my negative feelings toward grasshoppers. And all I have to do is share some food with my fellow denizens of the garden (I already share extra veggies with my neighbors, and they can be as hard to get along with as any pest). Under this new definition of success, I’m guaranteed never to fail.

Not convinced to live and let grasshoppers live? The great Henry David Thoreau is on my side. He felt the same about his garden at Walden Pond: “These beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks partly? … How, then, can our harvest fail?”

John Hershey vegetablehusbandry@gmail.com gardens on a suburban homestead in Littleton. Take a look at www.hersashomestead.com