Last week both my wife and I were hit by very large crickets( about 6 inches long without outstretched legs). I fished one out of the pool which was about the size of my palm. I've never seen them this size before. Have I just been leading a sheltered life or are these new. Can someone enlighten me?

Technical point. Do you really mean crickets, or big grasshopper/locust types?

The latter are quite common, but really big crickets are less common.

Unfortunatly we get rather a lot of those here, they are very partial to my very large and beautiful passion flower plant!

In answer to the OP question....yes that size sounds about right!

Yes now you mention it I guess it is more like a locust. I just didn't think of locusts in the context of Spain but I guess that was me not being on the ball.

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We get just the odd one of these huge locust type things. Must admit I always thought of them as big crickets too. I thought locusts were just crickets that had started to swarm from being too close together. I blame my husband for telling me that! I'm sure someone her knows the real answer. But there do seem to be a few more around this spring. Well. we've had fire flood and famine (well, financial crisis anyway) Maybe it's another biblical plague in the offing . We're all doomed!

Damned things I now kill them all, they have made a right mess of my peach, avocado and fig

Sorry your photo link does not work, I cannot remember how to do it

Interesting.

There are two body plans. The locust/grasshopper one is where the body seems more flattened laterally, and the crickets look more flattened vertically, if that makes sense. The smaller grey crickets are the house crickets, and very hard to eradicate once they get established. The shiny black ones are the field crickets. There are green crickets here but I see very few of those.

There's also the odd mole cricket, but you will be very lucky to see one of those.

The grasshopper types mostly are the small grey/brown ones, the big grey/brown onle that look to be the size of locusts, and the green grasshopper. Those are apparantly the ones that do the most damage, according to my neighbour.

Are you sure? I have never seen any of those here with leaves eaten by them, but I have seen the fruit massacred by beetles.

Big browny grey coloured ones and the bright green ones always on the plants. Last year I was told to get rid of them all as they damage the plants. Some have leaves eaten others have red leaf curl. My plum is dead.

One should always listen to people who have been gardening there for a long time, but do remember that sometimes they talk the purest garbage.

Red leaf curl. Matt is the boy for all this, but I am certain that whatever causes it, it isn't grasshoppers or crickets. Take the trouble to detect what it is that really is eating the leaves.

When people tell me to 'get rid of them all' I usually worry, as it is seldom 'all' that are to blame, and it's a shame to go around killing everything. If only because, a) you may not get the right pest, b) you may waste chems and money and c) the indiscriminate killing of 'bugs' can result in you killing the predatory ones, which will result in the problem ones going out of control.

I would have thought that the big grey/brown ones were locusts,though most ppl.say not.
I wonder what's the difference ?
Presume they belong to the same family ?

My mut just caught a one and ate it,..very cruchy.
He seems to have taken over the job from the cats.

Spray them with copper oxychloride just make sure that you do it well before or well after they have flowered and they will be fine. They tend to shed all their diseased leaves and put new growth on, this can put them under a hell of a lot of stress so give them a VERY heavy dose of nitrogen rich feed then get some seaweed extract into them, they will eventually make a good recovery.

There is no one here to ask, I had a good crop of peaches last year not looking so good this year. Same with my fig but not looked at it to see how it is doing. The plum was poorly looking last year good fruit but less of. Now no green when scrap the bark. As far as I know they have never been treated with anything. I squash the beasties UGH

I added a photo of one of the brown beasties to my gallery on here cant remember how to add to post sorry

I will get a photo of a leaf when the rain stops ! and post it to my gallery. I will also look for the items you mention. Thank you.