Thanks for the experience!
If I’m lucky, and my persimmons set this year, I will take your experience to heart and bag mine too.
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This(2014) was also the first year that I also bagged paw paws with the gray Lowe’s bags. A few big fruit were on the ground one day and had squirrel(s) bite marks on them, but were not eaten at all. I primarily bagged them in similar fashion as the persimmons so that when they got ripe and fell down instead of falling 5 to 15 feet down to the ground they would only fall a few inches and gently land in the bag. Those that had been landing on the ground in the past would get insect and pillbug damage pretty quickly before I got to them. Every bagged fruit whether solo or in a cluster would be easy to see from below sitting in the bottom of the bag. Again, the gray bags were not an eyesore from a distance.
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I read about growers who pinch out fruit blossoms and don’t wait to thin until the fruit has formed. They say some apples will trip into biennial bearing if you wait to thin until the fruit appears. I plan to thin blooms this year and bag before the June drop.
I used ziplock bags last year and it worked well, but I worry about the apple being in contact with hot plastic for months on end. Do the apples end up with plastic molecules on them? Is this similar to warning not to microwave anything in plastic?
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I’m testing this design to reduce moisture inside the bag and keep labor per bag down. About 50 have been installed and they appear to be doing better at reducing condensation.
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Last weekend and today I thinned apples and bagged them. This is my Liberty on M27. Minidwarf so every apple counts. The apples are about half the size of a dime. No evidence of insect damage before bagging. Some of last week’s bags steamed up a little, so I plumped up the bags to let air out.
Between this tree, a pear, and a fig, I used a 150-count box of zipper sandwich bags. It was not too tedious. I like getting up close and personal with my trees, and the repetitive work, thinning, observing, thinning, was a form of puttering meditation.
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Looks good. Bagging my smaller trees was fun but my one standard pear tree was a pain. It might get sprayed with surround next season. Is your picture an apple or pear tree? Bill
Bill, that tree is a Liberty apple on M27, very dwarf. I did start bagging pears for the first time this year too.
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For years I use bread packaging material its ideal for fruit protection
these pouches count a hundred ventilation holes There are different sizes small and large and thy are very weather resistant.
I guess not available in the US
Nectarine Seedling
Perfect seedling Nectarine
Pear Comice
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That looks like a winner. I’ve seen those here, but I don’t recall seeing smaller sizes. Here is a place selling.
http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product/micro-perforated-gusseted-bread-bags
Scott
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Has anyone had problems with strong winds? Depending on conditions, a bag could whip around until the fruit pops off the tree.
I use sandwich bag to cover my fruits. Never see the bagged fruit drop because of the strong wind.
Today, I used my wife’s pantyhose to bag several apples and a few peaches!
Cut them into reasonable-sized pieces; drop them over the fruitlets like a hood; then tie off the ends.
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@AJfromElmiraNY I was just about to post on that very subject. I got a bunch of organdy bags that someone on here suggested. I’ve got some on my apple tree and some on my pear tree. The pears have very long stems, and a couple of the bagged pears fell off after a few days of strong winds. When I looked carefully at them, it looked like the top of the stem (where they broke off) was browned and twisted. So I think what may have happened was that some of them were at a certain angle to the wind such that they flipped back and forth a lot, eventually breaking off. Kind of like metal fatigue. Others are still fine, and it may just be that they don’t catch the wind in the same way.
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No drops here in over a month. Most of my drops were early when the fruit was pea size or smaller. Some dropped from wind and others dropped due to low temperatures. My apples and pears are 1.5-2" now so they should be ok. I’m planning to spray surround a little next season until they get marble size and then bag.
I’m always looking for ways to improve my bagging technique. At what size to you bag the fruit and do you treat/spray prior to bagging? Thanks, Bill
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I’ve been using normal sandwich bags- 5.875" x 6.5" and come in boxes of 125. I’ve been doing 50-70 per day for the last ~4 days, with a few more days to go. It is a bit time consuming, but half the time spent is just thinning the fruit.
As Alan mentioned in the thinning thread, it is probably a good idea to start on the apples, before moving on to peaches as it can have a bigger impact on the return crop. So most of my thinning has been on apples and pears so far.
I’ve bagged a few peaches, as it is something I want to give a try this year, after hearing about my dad’s success last year. He is using the smaller bags this year, as he had some issues with the bags coming off with fruit. What he got to stick around was perfect. He is saying that he’ll re-bag later with a larger bag, but that seems like a lot of work to me. But, he is retired and doesn’t have that many peaches to bag (he mentioned ~50 after thinning), so maybe it will work out.
I think the fruit is a bit bigger this year, than some of the past years that I’ve bagged. Even though we got a late start, there has been a lot of sunny weather. It lead to the first strawberries 3-5 days earlier than normal for me.
I sprayed a single coat of Surround about a week and a half before I started bagging, hoping that it would help me have a few fruitlets without PC eggs to choose from. It kind-of worked, but it is quite a pain to examine each fruit before thinning to try to find the new unspoiled ones. It makes thinning take a lot longer. I also collect the fruit and bring it to the garbage, rather than dropping it on the ground and letting the PC pupate.
In terms of how I prepare the bag, I cut the 2 bottom corners off while they are still in a big stack. Then, a few bags at a time I make a single cut into the zipper, not extending much past it. This cut lets me completely close the bag on both sides of the stem. If you try to do a bunch at once, you wind up making the cut too deep and risk the fruit falling out through the resulting hole.
I just started making the zipper cut this year. I think that this cut will help keep the bags in place. In the past, I would routinely lose quite a few as the season went on. It is also quicker to put the bag on, as I only have to open and re-seal half of it.
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Is there any chance of seeing a before and after pic to see your fix on the baggie? Thanks
The previous two years I made the zipper cuts and they all stayed snug around the stem. This spring I eliminated this step and just secured the zip around the stem. Without the cut there is not a good seal and some becomes loose and a few does come off. Although I will go back to cutting the zip, the rough cut tends to scar the stem with the constant wind movement. One of my problems is bagging the fruit so soon after petal fall several of my fruit drops for reasons other than the bag. My next round of bagging I would like to let the fruit get a little larger. I think this will eliminate the disappointment of seeing bags drop. Bagging fruit does produce very good no or low spraying results. Best of luck with your bagging, Bill
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That is what I meant. I wasn’t sure how many would be lost to this. It sounds like only a small percentage.
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