LEAFHOPPER: attacks all vegetables and apple, cherry, plum, peach, hawthorn and pear trees.
The leafhoppers are a large and diverse family of sap-sucking, hopping insects. Wherever there are plants there are leafhoppers! Their body form look a lot like cicadas — only much smaller! Leafhoppers may be found all over the world, because they live wherever plants grow. Many species are associated with only certain types of plants, while others may eat a wide variety of plants.
As their name suggests Leafhoppers are known for their ability to jump, which allows them to quickly escape predators and move from plant to plant.
Like other hoppers, leafhoppers have their mouthparts arranged into a tube, which they insert into a plant leaf or stem and then use to suck plant fluids. Female leafhoppers use a hollow, needle-like structure called an ovipositor to poke a hole into the leaf or stem of a suitable host plant and insert eggs into the living plant tissue. When the eggs hatch, the nymphs (juvenile leafhoppers) eat and grow, molting 5 times. The final molt renders them winged, sexually mature adults.
Types of Leafhoppers
Some of the species in the leafhopper family are serious crop pests, causing damage by their feeding and/or egg-laying, but sometimes also by transmitting plant diseases.
Beet Leaf Hopper
The non-native beet leafhopper (Neoaliturus tenellus), was introduced to the United States from Asia. It is particularly troublesome as it carries not only the beet curly top virus from plant to plant but the citrus stubborn disease also. Beet Curly Top Virus also damages plants in the potato or nightshade family, including chilis, eggplant, tobacco, and tomato.
Potato Leafhopper
The potato leafhopper (Empoasca fabae), by its piercing-and-sucking feeding ecology, causes “hopperburn,” a mechanical injury to a wide range of crop plants, especially legumes, potato, fruits, and vegetables. This species can’t survive cold winters but must migrate north each spring.
Glassy-winged Sharpshooter Leafhopper
Although native to the Southeastern United States, the glassy-winged sharpshooter (Homalodisca vitripennis) damages grapes, citrus, and a variety of stone fruit trees . They are a vector (transmitter) of a bacterium associated with leaf-scorches and other plant diseases such as Pierce's disease in grapes and phoney peach disease in peaches.
White Apple Leafhopper
The white apple leafhopper is the most common and serious of all the leafhoppers found on apple as well as other tree fruits.White apple leafhopper is native to North America and appears throughout fruit growing regions of the United States.
Crops most attacked by the white apple leafhopper include apple, cherry, plum, peach, hawthorn and pear.
Damaged Caused by Leafhoppers
Leafhopper damage is characterized by light-colored speckling on plant leaves caused by the leafhoppers sucking sap and plant juices from within the plant tissue. Left unchecked, this gradual feeding reduces the plant's vigor over time, browning the leaves. Damage caused by leafhoppers is usually not severe enough to seriously harm mature plants unless it transmits a disease. However, young plants or new growth can be stunted and/or deformed by leafhopper feeding.
Damage from leafhoppers can include:
Sticky substance (honeydew) on the leaves
Growth of black and sooty mold
Skin from molting
Little black spots of excrement on the leaves
White spots or stippling on leaves
Yellow, brown or dry leaf tips (aka hopper burn)
Fungal diseases
Management of Leafhoppers
As you can imagine, given the fact that leafhoppers are the most abundant group of plant feeding insects in the world, their management can seem at times to be a little challenging. Once generations of leafhoppers begin to multiply the damage done increases. However, there are some things that the home gardener can do to help deter these tiny little pests.
Biological Controls
General predators of leafhoppers include assassin bugs, green and brown lacewings, minute pirate bugs, lady beetles, black hunter thrips, predaceous mites, robber flies and spiders and parasitic wasps.
Maintain a healthy soil as this boosts the plants immune system allowing the plant to fend off attacks from pests and disease.
Sf (Steinernema feltiae) Nematodes may be effective during the egg and nymph developmental stages. Simply apply them as a spray over the plant and as a soil drench.
Mechanical Controls
Cover susceptible plants with floating row covers early in the season.
Everyone knows how much fun you can have hand picking and squishing, so if you can catch them it would be another way to control leafhoppers. Or you could try catching them in a net.
A vacuum could be used to suck up leafhoppers into a very fine mesh bag. They can then be disposed of accordingly.
Use of a sticky trap may be helpful. Rather than placing it nearby which could easily trap beneficial bug or insects, simply hold it above the infected plants while lightly brushing the foliage with your other hand. The disturbed leafhoppers should become stuck to the card and can then be disposed of.
Cultural Controls
Make sure that you have healthy soil. This is a fundamental principle. The stonger the health of your plant, the better your plant will be able to fight off attacks.
Companion planting with plants that deter leafhoppers such as petunias or geraniums.
Try intercropping garlic as leafhoppers do not like the pheromones put out by them.
Plant flowers that attract beneficial insects which are natural predators for leafhoppers.
Maintain weed control.
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