How to get rid of Crickets

As crickets are world wide spread insects, they can easily find their way inside your home. As they tend to search for a warmer place to shelter in during winter, they can install themselves inside your house, especially the basement, where it’s dark, just as they like it, being nocturnal animals. If they start reproducing inside your house, they can lead to a lot of damage, especially caused to paper products, carpets, clothing, furniture and even walls. Crickets can also cause damage to crops, as they feed on seedlings or young plants, being able to decimate an entire field, if not controlled in time. However, control measures can be easily applied, by using safe and practical eradication methods, whether they are natural, organic or chemical.

You can use several types of removal methods when dealing with crickets. If the problem is inside your home, depending on the level of infestation, you can either use homemade remedies, or apply some of the stronger methods of eradication.

Through homemade recipes

– Keep a pet, such as a cat or a dog, as they will be able to kill the crickets they find, due to their natural predator instincts;
– Create traps alongside walls and in the corners of your house, especially in the areas infested by crickets. Bait them with cornmeal and apply glue traps, as the crickets will easily follow the food and get stuck in the trap;
– Make a “sweet trap” in a bowl, using molasses and water. The crickets will be attracted by the sweet smell and jump into the bowl, from where they will not be able to escape;
– You can use different plants that crickets hate, such as garlic, cilantro, nitrogen-fixing plants like cloves, sweet peas. By planting them near your door, under the window, or in a pot to be kept by the windows, you can avoid having the crickets come into your house;
– Keep a constant level of sanitation by vacuuming your house and making sure it is kept tidy. With the help of the vacuum you can also get rid of the eggs laid by crickets, so you will avoid a spread of the infestation. Clean the corners, walls, dark areas of your house and then make sure you throw away the content in a sealed plastic bag;
– You can also use soap traps to keep away the crickets. By mixing it with water in a low pressure sprayer, you can create an organic pesticide that will set onto the cricket’s shells and create cell damage;
– Pepper sprays also work well when dealing with crickets, just be careful to face it in the right direction;
– Bug aerosol insecticide are also effective against crickets. Apply them in the areas where you have seen the most activity and let them set for a while. You should be able to eradicate the family of crickets in no time;
– You can also allow the natural predators of cricket’s roam in your yard, and they will do their job without hesitation. Small lizards and spiders, ants, wasps and birds will all be able to get you rid of the crickets dwelling in your yard;
– Use Diatomaceous Earth, as it is an effective organic solution that will affect crickets to the point of killing them. This powder causes the insects to dehydrate and die, so by sprinkling it on the floor, in affected areas, once the crickets come in contact with it, they will get Diatomaceous Earth on their body, and finally die;
– As they are nocturnal creatures, crickets are attracted to bright lights, so especially in the night, avoid using them, try replacing your light bulbs with LED light; keep your entrance areas dark, especially during the night, and pull down your shutters to prevent light from inventing the insects inside your home;
– Keep your garden trimmed, to avoid having the crickets build nests and then move into your home when winter comes. Trim the vegetation and grasses regularly, thus preventing growth of the cricket population;
– Keep your garbage bin sealed, as the smell will attract them towards the area. You will be able to find crickets under and behind your trash cans, so be sure to check those areas regularly;
– Seal windows and door panels, cover up cracks and fill them in with caulk and also install screens over your vents, to keep the insects out of your house;
– Reduce the moisture in your home, especially in the basement, as this will help in avoiding a fast development of the crickets, should they already be installed in your home;
– Keep your garden and yard clean, as well as your house. By avoiding having leaves, scattered wood or construction items pilled up in your yard, you will not provide the crickets with a place where they can find shelter. This way, they will be forced to move as they will not find your property enticing.

Other natural ways of getting rid of crickets is using some other nitrogen-fixing plants that can irritate crickets and drive them out, such as beneficial weed like wormwood and alliums, which repel these pests and other insects. These can be added to the garlic, clover and sweet peas mentioned above, as a method of deterring crickets.
As crickets can be used a food for pets, such as lizards, snakes or hedgehogs, you can easily use them after you trap them. By catching them with traps such as the one with molasses, or the glue traps, crickets can be reused as a food source for your pets. However, if you killed them with bug aerosol insecticide or other chemical methods, do not feed them back to your animals, as this can affect their health. It is better to just clean the area of dead insects, and throw them away.

Keep crickets away from your yard and garden by attracting birds and other natural predators of crickets. They are the best way to contain an outside infestation. Even if both cats and dogs are masters at tracking down these pests, you are better off installing bird feeders in your yard, in order to attract them to your property. Then, the birds will do their job, after seeing that they have a stable food source based on crickets. Birds are an excellent, natural way of managing the cricket population from your yard or garden.
Managing lighting on your porch is also important, as bright light will attract the crickets towards your home. Replace traditional lighting with LEDs or amber coloured lights, as these do not attract crickets and will keep your yard care free.

By applying insecticide treatment

Spraying concentrated insecticides for Crickets control:

Concentrated insecticides are the most common used products in fighting insect infestations. They provide the safety that any insect coming into contact with the treated surfaces dies shortly.

The use of chemicals against crickets can be applied when dealing with a larger infestation. Pesticides can help when confronting a mass amount of these insects, affecting especially your crops. Pesticides can be use when crickets hide in cracks and crevices. Insecticidal dust is an effective way of making sure these tiny places are also reached and the crickets dwelling these are affected.
In basements, attics, crawl spaces, outbuildings, and home perimeters and lawns, cricket baits are often used. Baits based on boric acid are quite useful, as they are able to kill the crickets without affecting anything else in their path.
Satisfactory control of crickets frequently involves treatment both inside and outside the structure, as well as removal of breeding and feeding sites outdoors and use of tight-fitting screens and doors. Aerosol insecticide are recommended for chemical control. Wettable powders and micro-encapsulated formulations will give superior residual action on outdoor surfaces. Non-residual insecticides can also be very useful when applied as a fog to attics, ceiling voids, crawl spaces or other areas when fast knockdown and kill are required. Dust formulations of Drione, powerful silica-based desiccant, may be preferred in some circumstances, such as for treatment of crawl spaces, wall voids, or attics.
Treatments for mole crickets usually include a thorough treatment of the infested area with a granular based, residual insecticide. After applying the treatment, a thorough watering usually helps residual insecticides to penetrate the soil.

Sprayers used for Crickets control:

The equipment needed for a professional Pest Control Operator depends on the type of pest the treatment is made against, and if the treated surface is indoors or outdoors. Sprayers help in applying products meant to reach difficult places, as well as guaranteeing an economic control of the treatment application.

Crickets have been known to cause serious damage to crops, when infestations develop in such a way that they can even cause traffic hazards. Cases of such infestations appeared in Salt Lake City, where crickets affected crops which were already weakened by a serious drought. In 2003, a cricket infestation caused $25 million in damages from lost crops in Utah, with the main specie guilty of this being the Mormon cricket. The insects, which cannot fly, vary in color from light green to red-brown and may grow to 2 to 3 inches in length. Ravenous adults can cover a mile a day and up to 50 miles in a single season, devouring everything in their migration path, with a single Mormon cricket being able to consume 38 pounds of plants in its lifetime.

The mole cricket is also one of the most feared species when it comes to the way it affects crops.  The insects of this specie can feed on seeds, tillers in mature plants, and roots. They can cut plants at the base resulting to loss of plant stand. They mainly occur in rice field environments, where they can also be seen swimming in the water, if the field is flooded. They are also found in permanent burrows or foraging-galleries in levees or field borders, with the entrances to burrows being marked by heaps of soil. They manage to damage the rice fields, not only as adults, but as nymphs as well, as the younglings feed on the roots of the plants and damage the crops in large patches.

As they are polyphagous insects, they feed on the underground parts of almost all-upland crops, and in rice fields, they cause the majority of damage when there is no standing water, and the fields are not sufficiently flooded.
Such an infestation can be prevented by collecting the nymphs and adults found while preparing the land and by flooding it for 3-4 days and leveling the field for better water control.
When it comes to the control of this specie, maintain a level of standing water. You can also encourage the presence of natural predators, such as wasps, beetles, nematodes and fungus, or you can also use poison, by using baits made by mixing moistened rice bran and insecticide and placing it along rice bunds or drier areas of the field.

Even though most of them are considered pests, some cricket species can positively affect crops. The field cricket is one of them, as it has an ecological role in the decomposition of unwanted plants and weeds. They consume large quantities of often highly resistant, cellulose rich plant materials and produce faecal pellets that are easily decomposed by bacteria and fungi. Their activity, then, greatly accelerates the energy and nutrient flows in an ecosystem and provides plants with a much more abundant reservoir of highly available, essential growth factors. Field crickets also consume the seeds of many significant “weed” species thus reducing the potential of these rapidly growing, invasive plants to dominate both natural and human generated ecosystems, such as lawns or gardens.
Although beneficial species exist, most of the cricket families are known to cause havoc on your home, yard or garden. By following the above instructions, you can make sure you get rid of them from your property, whether you are dealing with just some individual, or a larger infestation.

However, as prevention is the best step you can take when dealing with such issues, you can follow the details presented in our article related to ways in which you can prevent crickets from affecting your property, inside or outside. Follow the methods shown on our “Prevent a cricket infestation” page, and keep in mind that, as with any other type of pests, by keeping a constant level of sanitation inside and outside your house, you will be able to keep them at bay, and avoid all these troubles crickets can bring.