Every few years, the buzzing drone of cicadas fills gardens and yards across the country, prompting homeowners to wonder whether these insects will damage their landscape or pose risks to their families and pets. Understanding what cicadas actually do helps you protect vulnerable plants while keeping the rest of your home and garden concerns in perspective.
This guide explains how cicadas affect your trees, shrubs, lawn, and outdoor spaces so you can take practical steps during emergence years without unnecessary worry.
Are Cicadas Harmful to People, Pets, and Property?
Cicadas are not harmful to humans or pets and do not bite, sting, or carry diseases. They can damage young trees and shrubs through egg-laying, which creates small slits in branches, but they do not eat leaves, destroy lawns, harm structures, or threaten established woody plants. The primary concern for homeowners is protecting newly planted or vulnerable landscape plants during peak emergence periods.
What Cicadas Actually Do in Your Yard
Cicadas emerge from the soil as nymphs, climb trees or structures, shed their exoskeletons, and spend their brief adult lives mating and laying eggs. Adult cicadas feed on fluid from tree branches using a piercing mouthpart, but this feeding causes no significant damage to healthy plants.
The real impact happens when female cicadas use a saw-like appendage to cut small slits in tree branches to deposit their eggs. Each female can create dozens of these slits across multiple branches, and heavy cicada populations may target the same trees repeatedly.
Why Young Trees Are Vulnerable
Trees and shrubs planted within the past two to three years have limited branch structure and energy reserves to recover from egg-laying damage. When cicadas create numerous slits in thin branches, those tips often die back in a condition called flagging, which appears as brown, wilted branch ends.
Established trees with thick bark and robust branch systems tolerate cicada activity without lasting harm. Mature trees may show some flagging, but they replace damaged growth quickly and experience no long-term health decline.
Protecting Your Landscape During Cicada Season
If you live in an area expecting a cicada emergence, focus your protection efforts on the most vulnerable plants rather than trying to control the insects themselves across your entire property.
Which Plants Need Protection
Prioritize covering or wrapping these landscape elements:
- Newly planted trees and shrubs less than four years old
- Ornamental fruit trees, especially young specimens
- Grafted plants with limited branch growth above the graft union
- Expensive or rare specimen plants that would be costly to replace
- Container plants on patios or decks in areas with heavy cicada activity
Large, established shade trees, mature evergreens, groundcovers, perennials, and lawn grass do not require protection.
How to Cover Vulnerable Plants
Use lightweight netting with openings smaller than one-quarter inch draped over the entire canopy of young trees and shrubs. Secure the netting at the base of the plant so cicadas cannot crawl underneath, but leave enough slack that branches can move without tearing the material.
Install protective covers before cicadas emerge and leave them in place for four to six weeks during peak activity. Remove netting promptly once cicada numbers decline to prevent birds, small mammals, or the plant itself from becoming entangled as it grows.
Timing Your Planting Around Cicada Years
If you know a major periodical cicada emergence is coming to your region, delay planting new trees and shrubs until after the adults die off. Cicadas typically remain active for four to six weeks in late spring or early summer, so you can plant safely in mid to late summer once activity subsides.
This simple timing adjustment eliminates the need for netting and gives your new plants a full season to establish roots before winter.
What Cicadas Do Not Damage
Homeowners often worry about impacts that cicadas simply do not cause, leading to unnecessary treatments or concerns.
Your Lawn and Garden Beds
Cicadas do not eat grass, vegetable plants, annual flowers, or perennials. The holes you may notice in your lawn are exit holes from emerging nymphs, not feeding damage.
These holes do not harm your turf, and they will disappear on their own within weeks as soil settles and grass grows. You do not need to fill, treat, or reseed these areas unless you were already planning lawn renovation.
Your Home Structure
Cicadas do not chew wood, damage siding, burrow into structures, or threaten your home’s integrity. The cast-off exoskeletons you find on tree trunks, fences, and exterior walls brush off easily and cause no harm.
You may find cicadas resting on outdoor furniture, umbrellas, or building walls, but they are simply using these surfaces as perches. They will leave on their own and cause no damage while present.
People and Pets
Cicadas have no stinger, no venomous bite, and no defensive chemicals. They cannot hurt you, your children, or your pets through direct contact.
Dogs and cats sometimes eat cicadas, which are not toxic but may cause mild digestive upset if consumed in large quantities. Monitor pets that seem obsessed with hunting cicadas, and discourage excessive consumption to avoid stomach discomfort or vomiting.
Managing the Noise and Nuisance Factor
The loud buzzing chorus of male cicadas can reach 90 to 100 decibels in areas with dense populations, comparable to a lawnmower or leaf blower running continuously during daylight hours.
Reducing Noise Indoors
Close windows during peak calling times, which typically occur during the warmest part of the day. Use fans, air conditioning, or white noise machines to mask outdoor sounds if the buzzing becomes disruptive.
The noise period is temporary and ends when the mating cycle completes, usually within four to six weeks. There are no safe, effective methods to silence cicadas outdoors across a residential property.
Cleaning Up After Cicadas
Dead cicadas accumulate on patios, walkways, driveways, and pool surfaces as the emergence cycle ends. Sweep or rake them into garden beds where they decompose quickly and return nutrients to the soil.
You can add dead cicadas to compost piles, where they break down as a high-protein nitrogen source. Bury large quantities in garden beds or around established trees rather than bagging them for trash collection.
Why Pesticides Are Not Recommended
Spraying insecticides to control cicadas in your yard is generally ineffective, expensive, and harmful to beneficial insects that you want in your garden.
Cicadas emerge in such large numbers that localized spraying makes no meaningful dent in the population. Insects killed in your yard are immediately replaced by others flying in from surrounding areas.
Risks of Chemical Treatment
Broad-spectrum insecticides kill pollinators, predatory insects, and other beneficial organisms along with cicadas. Products labeled for cicada control often persist in the environment and continue harming helpful insects long after cicada activity ends.
If you have netted your vulnerable young plants, pesticide treatment offers no additional benefit. Established plants that you cannot practically cover do not suffer long-term harm from cicada activity and do not justify chemical intervention.
The Benefits Cicadas Bring to Your Landscape
Despite the temporary inconvenience, cicada emergences provide several benefits to your yard’s ecosystem.
Soil Aeration and Nutrient Cycling
Millions of emerging nymphs tunnel through compacted soil, creating channels that improve air and water movement to plant roots. When the adult cicadas die and decompose, they release nitrogen and other nutrients that fertilize trees, shrubs, and garden beds naturally.
This massive pulse of organic matter feeds soil microorganisms and contributes to long-term soil health without any input from you.
Food for Wildlife
Birds, squirrels, and other wildlife feed heavily on cicadas during emergence years, and many species time their breeding cycles to take advantage of this abundant food source. The protein boost supports healthy nestlings and young animals.
You may notice increased bird activity in your yard during cicada season, which also helps control other insect pests as birds forage more actively throughout your landscape.
Understanding Periodical vs. Annual Cicadas
Your region may host both periodical cicadas, which emerge in massive numbers every 13 or 17 years, and annual cicadas, which appear every summer in smaller numbers.
Annual cicadas produce the familiar summer buzzing in many regions but never reach the densities that cause concern for tree damage. Periodical cicadas create the large-scale emergences that prompt protective measures for young landscape plants.
Knowing What to Expect in Your Area
Check with your local university extension service to learn whether your region is due for a periodical cicada emergence in coming years. These offices maintain maps and schedules based on tracked broods and can tell you which years to expect high populations.
This information helps you time new plantings appropriately and prepare protective materials before cicadas appear.
What to Do If Damage Occurs
If your young trees show flagging despite your protection efforts, resist the urge to prune immediately. Many trees benefit from leaving the damaged branch tips in place until the following dormant season.
Eggs inside the damaged wood will not survive past late summer, and the flagged branches often serve as a natural pruning point the tree would create on its own. Removing them too early can stimulate new growth that does not harden off before winter.
Pruning Flagged Branches
Wait until late winter or early spring after the damaged wood has fully dried. Prune flagged tips back to healthy wood just above an outward-facing bud or lateral branch.
Most young trees recover fully from cicada damage within one to two growing seasons, developing denser branch structure as they replace lost growth. Continue regular watering and avoid fertilizing heavily, which can push excessive tender growth.
Moving Forward After Cicada Season
Once adult cicadas die off, you can resume normal planting, pruning, and landscape maintenance without special precautions. The next generation will remain underground for years, giving you a long window to establish new plants safely.
Remove any protective netting promptly, clean up accumulated dead insects, and assess any damage to young plants. In most cases, you will find that your landscape weathered the emergence better than you feared, and any harm to vulnerable plants proves temporary.
Thank you for taking the time to understand how cicadas affect your home landscape and what practical steps actually help during emergence years. We hope this guide helps you approach the next cicada season with confidence and realistic expectations for your yard.