I promise you that this won’t be the last time you will hear from me about the 17 Year Periodical Cicada.

I’ll try and keep you abreast of their anticipated arrival up until they come out of the ground. Keep in mind that depending on the temperature, you can expect their emergence sometime between the middle and last of May, but I remind you that it depends on the soil temperature.

Who knows, they might even come out sooner if the soil warms up quicker.

As I have mentioned earlier, look for these insects to emerge under trees they love to lay eggs in like maple, oak, dogwood, apple and even crabapple trees. It’s best to get to your local lawn and garden center and purchase enough cheese cloth, vegetable row cover or even tobacco row cover to drape over the trees that I just mentioned.

Just make sure you have enough material to cover the entire tree and tie it at the trunk. The trees that will receive the most damage are the more immature trees like under 6-8 feet in height. Larger trees will generally survive the dead outside branch damage. However, with the smaller trees, it could drastically affect the trees future shape. You will know when the cicada arrive, you’ll see them coming out of the ground as well as hearing their high pitched sounds. As soon as you hear them, get the trees covered or, even better, before you hear them.