Cicada ?

[motdaugrnds]

David found many, many hills of soil with rather large holes in them. He thinks they were made by Cicada.

In researching Cicada, I did not find whether or not they will destroy our vegetable and/or fruit crops. Has anyone had any experience with these?

[mistletoad]

All of our cicadas leave just a hole in the ground with no mound of dirt. They eat tree sap and can leave scarring on the tree, but your vegetables will be safe if those are cicadas.

[Badger]

Hills of mounded up soil with a large hole in the center is probably crawdads if the ground is soft or wet.

[Danaus29]

How big are the holes? Big as your finger or a couple inches across? Cicadias make holes only about as big around as your finger. The ones we had come up a few years back did leave dirt towers in some spots. Chimney crawdads will leave tunnels and towers that are a couple inches across. Moles will leave large mounds with a hole in the middle. The mounds are soft loose dirt and can be up to a foot across.

[motdaugrnds]

The holes are large enough for a finger to enter. There do not appear to be any tunnels; just mounds of dirt; and there appear to be hundreds in the ground under our paw paw grove.

The ground is very dry and very hard there; so I doubt they are crawdads. Also, I know what mole tunnels look like and it is not moles. We're pretty sure they are cicadias; and it is real nice to know they won't bother out vegetables and/or fruits.

[Danaus29]

If the hole is just enough for one finger it is cicadias. I took a bunch of pictures of their tunnels but apparently they are not on this computer.

You will have damage to your trees. The female will slice open the smaller branches on the underside so she can lay her eggs in the opening. The eggs will hatch and the nymphs will fall to the ground and burrow into the soil where they will spend several years feasting on the sap in the tree and shrub roots.

Despite all the info that claims the adults do not feed, I found evidence that they do. They spend a lot of time with their proboscis stuck into trees and if you put one in a jar with a cotton ball soaked in sugar water they will stick their proboscis into the cotton ball. We kept one alive for 3 days with sugar water. Another with just plain water did not survive 24 hours.

[motdaugrnds]

Danaus29 I am wondering if there is anyway to get rid of them while they are in the soil. We have our "Staghorn Sumac" in that area that we are attempting to grow..not to mention our paw paw trees, a couple of plum tree, wild cherry tree and 3 of David's Ginko trees. I sure don't want those harmed!

[Danaus29]

Your best defense now would be to get a bunch of cheap fiberglass screen and wrap it around your little trees. It's too late to get them before they emerge. And truthfully I don't know of any insecticide that will get them wile they are underground. They don't feed enough to really harm the tree roots. The damage is when the female makes the slit in the branches to lay her eggs in. They messed up my tangerine tree real bad by slicing the little branches.