Do you leave those for your squirrels or would all of that fruit just attract more of them?
I was just facing a branch that looked like it would break. Rather than taking off fruit, my solution was to put in a post and tie it up 
And this is after I thinned pretty heavily (for meā¦).
My Loring peach is also feeling a little heavy.
Itās on my to-do list to go over those trees looking for bug damage and rot.
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Touching peaches encourage earwigs and brown rot. Rot spreads very quickly between peaches and what a mess it becomes when it starts killing small wood.
My peach thinning is done, beyond removing fruit that is injured enough to rot prematurely, but Iām still thinning apples- always seem to miss some branches. There is still a lot of time for most of them to ripen and I think the benefit of thinning is extended by this. I purposely thin Honeycrisp late to try to stop them from being huge and maybe reducing their tendency to rot.
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@mrsg47, I left them in the yard like that overnight. I have not checked what happened to the pile. I saw a few zip locked bags got chewed and the apples were gone. I am confident to say itās raccoonsā work at night. We have seen a cat strolling my yard. Itās not squirrels.
Anyone know what is a good bait for raccoons? Iād like to try trapping them.
@BobVance - driving a post in ground in my yard has two big issues 1) hitting rocks 2) our sprinkler system (the guy who put it in did not provide us with a layout where every pipe is).
What have you sprayed your trees with? How effective is your spray schedule? I would love not to bag my peaches but I also want to use a less chemical approach. Although I sprayed Indar 3 times earlier, I saw signs of possible brown rot on some dropped plums and peaches. Not sure if I need to spray one more times. Thatās a lot of Indar spray, to me.
@scottfsmith - how many Indar spray have you done this year? Are you done with it for the season?
@alan - I, too, do not want Honey Crisp to get huge. Thatās why I left 2-3 in some clusters. However, they got to be too many and finally I took most of them off. Right now, most HC on the tree are single.
Leaving too many HC on the tree resulted in my HC becoming biennial for several years. This year, it flowered and fruit after fruiting last year so I have broken the cycle. I tried to take off many flower clusters this spring and thinned heavily early on. Still, too many left on the tree until yesterday. I am curious to see if it will go biennial next year. What a pain!!!
Raccoons love sweet corn
Thanks. Will buy some as baits.
They love marshmallows more.
Thatās even cheaper than corn 
While I donāt doubt that they love corn or marshmallows (theyāve worked OK for me), anything with peanut butter is very effective. You also have a chance to catch squirrels, possums, groundhogs (harder), and the occasional skunk. Stale bread or bagel with PB will bring them in like anything. Even apple cores with PB. Sometimes just the smell of yesterdayās raccoon is enough, when Iāve forgotten to re-bait. I got a huge one today that I couldnāt comfortably carry with one arm (though to be fair, he was wetā¦).
I do too. The farmerās market has had some very good corn recently. I asked the grower the variety and he reported it as āKickoffā, a new one he is trying this year. Plenty of flavor and pop-right off the ear tender.
For the last two years, Iāve been doing 2-3 sprays in the spring of Immunox and Triazicide. It is better than nothing, but I still see a lot of damage on some trees. I think I should hire Alan to do things right and clear out any remaining bugs. Maybe my efforts are enough to deal with a blank slate, but it is tough once they get established.
I suspect that the brown rot has a few causes. As Alan said, touching fruit is a no-no. I though that I had eliminated that, but I was looking yesterday when I took the above pic and found a double, which was of course rotting on both where they touched. And I think the bug damage also provides a entry point for the BR. The 3rd issue is that some peaches (Iām looking at you TangO) rot at the drop of a hat (or a drop of rain).
Iāve been spraying 1-2 applications of Monterey Fungi Fighter (2 last year, 1 this year). Have you compared Indar vs MFF?
This year I sprayed maybe three earlier in the season (basically when I was already spraying Surround I often mixed it in), and one in early July. I will probably do one more spray of Indar on everything. I am also using it with Elevate which has a different mode of action, plus Regalia which boosts plant resistance. This year brown rot has been at the lowest level ever in my orchard, and its clear that it is due to the spray program. I have found a few fruits rotting but they were always the ones touching each other and/or cracked or pecked at or bug damaged. Right now my Satsuma is ripening and I havenāt found a single rotten or bug-damaged fruit on the whole tree 
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Thanks, Scott, for your response. We have been pretty wet lately. I see signs of rot in fruit I picked recently. Iāve seen signs of rot in plums esp. Shiro this year, something new to me. It could be that I touched a lot of them during bagging. I probably bruised/injured them and here comes the rot.
All my 3 Indar sprays were early on. The first two were before bagging. The last one was at the end iof June. Most stone fruit were in baggs by then. Bagging probably reduces effectiveness of rot prevention since chemical onky partially reach fruit.
I shoukd have mixed Indar in Surround when I sprayed two days ago.
Always something.
Bob,
Thanks for the tip of peanut butter/stale bread for raccoons. I am inclined to use baits that skunks do not like (peanut butter, marshmellows). Not sure if skunks like corns. (I do).
Iāve never used MFF (now itās Bonide Infuse product). Like I said in my last post. Spraying Indar through bags is not the most effective method.
I have sprayed waaaay more than your 2-3 sprays. In fact, this year, I sprayed early and often. A couple of first sprays were insecticide and fungicide. Then, itās Surround and bagging.
I just finished my 6th Surround spray. I am done with spraying for this season. Maybe, one more Indar as it looks like itās needed.
I thought I thinned my Korean Giant well with several rounds of thinning. Check the tree today, too many small ones that have not sized up. So I thinned about 100 more off.
Iāve seen that some animals have eaten these unripe KG whie the pears were hanging on the tree. So rude. I had to take those off myself. Some were well eaten. Others were partially eaten.
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Iām at least a week later than you in fruit development, but this year I protected most stone fruit in orchards a manage with one Indar spray in mid-July. Yes, I use it on my 2nd insecticide spray 10-`14 days after petal fall, but even at sites where no Indar is sprayed at that time the single July spray works the same.
I thought this year and last year with all the rain a second spray would be necessary and I kept waiting for rot that never came- that is not enough to threaten the bulk of the crop. At shady sites a second spray is certainly needed for latest peaches- like Encore.
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I have a lot fewer Methley plums this year compared to last year. Last year, I had about 125 good plums and it was the first year the tree produced fruit. It was planted in 2014. This year there are less than 50 (and some of those have already been struck by curc). Last year I feel like I did a lot of thinning, but is it possible I didnāt do enough, causing the tree to produce less this year? Do plums do that like apples? I want to know for the future so I can thin out even more next year if I need to.
thanks
It happens often. Your tree is taking a break!
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Hmmm, letās start a list of things that are harder to say than do.
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Apples go biennial very easily in my opinion. Stone fruit like plums or peaches may not go biennial but Iāve found that my plums produce noticeably fewer fruit when they were loaded the previous year.
Often, we under-thin our fruit trees. When you take off over 50 % of the fruit esp. when fruit are small, it feels like you already thin way too many off
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Thatās what I was driving at. Last year I removed, what I would say, was over 50% of the fruit to try and avoid this but it doesnāt seem to be enough.
It seems the only real, logical solution here is to plant more trees.
If you can thin out 80% of the fruit, that would likely prevent over cropping but how many of us have done that consistently. I am talking about backyard growers like us who on average, have one tree of each variety.
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