Personally, no I haven't as I have never had the time to "follow through" with treatments. I think there must be virtue in some of the organic sprays (there was an ABC gardening segment a week or two ago on TV about making some) but I would think they have to be used frequently and followed up after rains. Not to mention, carefully, for the user.

I expect - and I suppose you do hope, that when your plantings get established, you are going to have a whole eco-system that becomes gradually more self-supporting, so birds may be drawn in and take care of many insects.

and of course it's nice to know there are other pollinators around with butterflies and moths, its just that unfortunately they do tend to make a mess of individual species sometimes.

I found this year - where I am (Gold Coast) it was such a dry spring and the summer rain was so late, it was a while before I realised many of the usual pests were missing. It's only been the last few weeks after those rains, that we've had baby grasshoppers and a lot more caterpillars - a late start.

I don';t know what size area you have, or what type of plants. and I'm mindful that to have pollinators you sometimes need to sacrifice fodder plants for caterpillars and larvae.

In the short term you could consider netting some of your young plants - cloth not wire.

Early morning walks are usually good for shaking out the baby grasshoppers - take a bucket of hot water and some gloves.

And maybe some decoy plantings that will distract butterflies - even to the extent of relocating grubs elsewhere - there's probably something you can think of as a quick "crop" that can be pulled out later and composted

Hi Jan. About the only natural spray that will deter grasshoppers is grasshoppers, thrown in the blender, then water added to make a spray. Needless to say, you'll need to wash the blender afterwards. I haven't tried it, but it apparently is very effective.

I've found that by far the most effective way to control other chewing insect pests is to accept that there will be some damage done in the process and largely letting nature take care of itself. Keep an eye on particularly fragile plants and manually remove caterpillars etc. I always remove sawfly larvae, as they can do a lot of damage in a short time, likewise the caterpillars laid inside the leaves of bulbs and the like, as they will migrage into the bulb itself and totally demolish it.

I've also had the invasion of caterpillars as mentioned by Alison, but they've been closely followed by literally thousands of tiny orange wasps, which lay their eggs inside the caterpillar. They're also hunting the lawn grubs that have invaded this section of the coast after the good rains we've had. While the chemical companies have made a small fortune in the past couple of months, it's a shame those in the media didn't do more promote natural means of control. One newspaper article even suggested sprinkling SALT on the lawn to control them. I guess if there is no lawn (having killed it with salt) then there are no lawn grubs feeding on it. TOTALLY STUPID!!!

If the caterpillars really get to the stage of being out of control before your predators turn up Jan, you can always use Dipel. It's a spray made from a naturally occuring bacteria. Once the caterpillars have ingested it, they apparently stop eating, but will take a few days to die.