There are 4 kinds of bags I’ve seen people on the old GW have used; the plastic zip locked bags like Bear showed, the nylon footsies/sox, and organza bags and surgical hair net.
Plastic zip locked bags: often used for apples, and pears. I found they work very well with Shiro plums of mine, too. I don’t bags pears for their tough skin and fast growing fruit helps save themselves from damages from coddling moths and Oriental fruit moths. I only bag apples.
Footsies: there are white ones and Surrounded-soaked ones (brown). They are used for apples and peaches. I use them for peaches. I have mixed result re. CM and OFM laying eggs through the sox. Surround-soaked has better results. Timing when to put the sox on is critical. One year I waited to long, lot of damages.
Organza bags: Scott uses it for grapes. Don’t know if they could be good for peaches or not. They may have too big of a hole to do the job.
Surgical hairnet: Tony uses it for his fruit like plums. It’s expandable to cover the whole bunch of them. Tony can chime in on his technique.
I am all for no spray but after bagging hundreds of them, it’s tedious, tiresome and pure pain. Footsies are harder to tie. Zip lock bags are easier to install but pain, nonetheless.
June fruit drop is a concern like North mentioned. I’ve found that with thinning early when fruitlets are tiny, I do not suffer as much fruit drops, may be 10-20%. You can’t wait after June to bag, CM and OFM attack your fruits far sooner than that.
My new strategy is to spray with Surround and Surround mixed with Spinosad. Believe me, after hundreds of bagging, you will long for spray, almost any spray, at that moment.
Mamuang. My aborts are in line with yours. I most likely will add surround next season for my pears. In my location PC nips at the small pears but tends to not bother them as they grow. CM damage has been minimal for our pears but love the apples. With using surround in the spring a couple of times I might be able to avoid bagging the pears. Bill
Auburn, I started using Surround last year. I believe Scott suggested not to add sticker for to it for could stick too well on fruit skin. I sprayed a few times.
One needs to get used to the look of Surround on skin of peaches. I have to tell people I gave peaches to that it was were clay, not diseases.
Will bagging help against Crows?I have a young Asian Pear that most likely,they went after last year when the fruit was about 1/4 of full size.Or maybe a net should be put over the whole tree,being still fairly small and not too difficult to do. Thanks,Brady
I bag many of my fruits, grapes, asian pear，peach , cherry, and strawberries. Trying to prevent birds, squirrels, raccoons from stealing my fruits. Only a little success on the Asian pears. The rest, fruits gone with the bags
For your pear, I vote for netting the whole tree. Bagging is tedious esp. if you have a lot of fruit. Each of my A.pear tree bears hundreds and hundreds of fruit. I thin them down to about a hundred.
Thanks mamuang,I could probably net the tree or bag at this point,because of the total size and if the tree gets a dozen fruits,that might be too much.I’m going to get some woven netting anyway,for other plants,so probably will do that. Brady
Here’s a photo:
I had very good success with bagging, at least until we started having complete and total weather related crop failures a few years ago.
I will say that it got just a little worse every year. The last year I had earwig damage that was significant. Earwigs are smarter than the average insect.
I never thought about cutting a hole in the side . I always trimmed off the lip above the zip lock and stapled along the top. I don’t know why the side cut wouldn’t work.
Netting will protect against birds but you should not drape the net on the tree. Crows can peck through it. You have to put netting over the tree.
I use netting from American Nettings and somehow make it shape like a mosquito net over my trees. Do Not forget to secure the net on the ground or gather the bottom and tie it to the trunk of the tree. Crows are smart. They will walk on the ground and get to your fruit from underneath.
I have bagged apples before just to use the pictures on fruit lectures. I use plastic ziplock bags with
good results. The only tree I now bag is Haralson as Imidan insecticide tends to leave the skin of this
apple really scarred up. The rest I spray. Friends that I know who do this have good luck also
if they spray early in the season and then bag when the fruits are dime sized. Those who bagged
but did not spray at least at petal fall sometimes had curculio scars that occurred before the bag was
put on.
Unfortunately, I now get reports from friends that deer have figured out that what is inside the bag is good to eat. Two friends lost a lot of fruit last year to these critters. They find the
bag still on the tree but the apple eaten in half. Once the deer figured what was in the bag, they kept coming back.
Last year was my maiden voyage trying to protect lots of great Hana Fuyu and Suruga persimmons after they had become orange colored and were being ruined by wasps, honeybees, woodpeckers, Mocking birds, and squirrels. I loosely enclosed clusters of 2-4 fruit in tan colored, thin, plastic grocery bags and tied a somewhat loose knot on top with the bag handle loops. There was always a bit of an opening near the knot, so on warmer days hot air would not build up inside. Not even one fruit was damaged in the 25 or so bags, but among the unbagged were quite a few that got poked, gnawed, or otherwise gobbled up by the critters while waiting for them to fully ripen. Due to some water collecting inside during heavy rain, this year I will cut bottom drain holes when installing them rather than after the first big rain. Also, I will bag them as soon as the orange makeover begins. From a distance the tan bags are hardly an eyesore.
