The other day I went to harvest some more raspberries and found two surprises! On the first raspberry bush, I found a young praying mantis. On the second raspberry bush, I found a young grasshopper.
When I was little, I loved trying to catch grasshoppers. While grasshoppers are cute, they can do a lot of damage to your plants so they fall under the category of a red alert or a bad bug. I usually find grasshoppers chewing on the leaves of my bean plants. If you see them in your vegetable or berry garden, I would try relocating them or terminating them. While some people eat grasshoppers, I will pass on this “delicacy”.
Praying mantis can be very helpful in the garden because they will go after grasshoppers, moths, and insects.  Praying mantis look so slow and harmless but their head swivels completely around so they don’t miss anything and their legs have spikes which help them catch their prey. I have a feeling the grasshopper is not going to make it!
If you see one grasshopper or one praying mantis around, you may see many more. A grasshopper will dig a hole and lay up to 100 eggs.  A praying mantis will lay its eggs in a sac on a branch or on the house. In the sac, there can be up to 300 eggs. If you don’t have any around, you can purchase a praying mantis sac online – who knew!! If you want to keep any praying mantis alive and healthy, don’t use any chemicals on your plants.
