Kids are good. I get mine to catch them and feed them to the chooks, except the youngest who wants to keep them in a bottle! If you haven't any kids, borrow a friends, and if they need some encouragement pay them 5c or 10c a grasshopper (or whatever you can afford, depending on numbers).

As MM suggests, encourage wildlife into your garden, they're the best type of pest control.

An interesting fact; On ABC the other day, I heard a lettuce grower mention that the grasshoppers never touch his red lettuce. I would love to know if this also applies to other coloured leaves and other plants.
Cheers,
Dee.

My grasshoppers eat rhubarb (there goes that as a home remedy)
the eat chilli leaves (there goes that one too)
cordyline
egg plant leaves
rose leaves
vitnamese mint (i would have thought pretty unpalatable too)
okra leaves (which are supposed to be highly toxic)
olive leaves (another highly toxic plant)
they're giving my bananas a good chew too

the only things they don't touch are capsicum leaves, all of the ferns and the brahmi

I'm waiting with baited breath to find a recipe that will deter/kill them

I guess that my hundreds of skinks and geckos are knocking the little hoppers around, and the birds enjoy a feed but soon get sick of them - what the hoppers are eating makes them unpalatable to birds: but other than bringing cane toads I can't think of anything that eats enough of them to slow them down at all.

just had a thought - chickens or guinea fowl

Chilli and soap spray was mentioned on Gardening Australia last night. I didn't catch the amounts to use, but no doubt it would be on their web site.
Cheers,
Dee.

Another website I found suggested letting your chickens in the yard to eat the grasshoppers...does not work for me as the trees are too tall and my neighbors would complain if I got chickens.

For the grasshoppers on the ground or fence, my dog loves to chase and eat them. I'll keep waiting for another method without using toxic chemicals.

We befriended a baby magpie and its parents (baby had tail feathers ripped out so didnt fly for a lot longer than normal till new ones grew) and were feeding them bits of mince, cheese etc to top up babies diet for a while. Baby now loves to catch and eat the grasshoppers in our front yard and is so proficient that both our front yard and that of the neighbours either side and across the road are 95% grasshopper free. So if you can't have chooks or the grasshoppers are up high, try befriending the local Maggies. Be warned cheese for maggies is almost addictive, they will be back EVERY day for more, but probably shouldnt eat a lot of it, so just a few little (.5cm) squares each.

I made up a concoction of garlic and chilli spray, by soaking chopped chillies and garlic in parafin oil. This is a base that I then dilute before spraying. Works very well in my vegie patch if I spray every couple of days.

concocted an infusion of vege oil, chilli, pyrethrum, cloves cardamon, rinse aid and boiling water. I put it in a spray bottle after filtering out all the chunky bits, and sprayed liberally over my affected plants.

An effective remedy is to brew some coffee about 10 times as strong as you normally would and allow it to cool. Then, spray it on your plants. Another technique can be keeping insects and other animals around that eat grasshoppers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Eliminate'em Pest Control

Hi I have tried a lot of different sprays and oils the oil burns the plants up here in cairns so I decided to use our remedy that my wife uses on her ferns and all pot plants A FEW DROPS OF TABASKO SAUCE IN A SPRAY. BOTTLE 500ml water ',and just spray your veggies fruit trees and pot plants it works for us .

Some great remedies here everyone. Thanks for posting. I'm gonna try the tabasco sauce caper straight up!

We had an infestation on our farm this year, and ended up using several methods to gain control. I wrote an article here with details:

How to get rid of grasshoppers