Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

Cicadas are slowly on the wane towards the end of March. It’s been a pretty Noisy March so far, typical of the regular system whereby Cicadas have a three, five, or seven year life cycle.  Black field crickets (Teleogryllus commodus) are still making a heck of a noise in the late afternoon/evening, especially in the North Island and top of the South. They’ll be enjoying that dodgy boy-girl party for at least another month or more! Black field crickets make their characteristic noise by rubbing their wings together (great mating calls).  You won’t see them often, as they hide in cracks in the soil during the day, but when the sun goes down the crickets will come to the surface to eat grasses – they can do a lot of damage to pasture and lawns, leaving bare soil around their home cracks.  Control is quite hard. In the old days, farmers used wheat, soaked in Maldison, strewn over the paddock in early summer (January is the month before crickets become adults and hence, reproduce). For a lawn it mi