I’ve been bagging for years - I use ziplock sandwich bags, the cheap ones are best
It can indeed take a long time to bag a lot of apples, but I thin at the same time, and you can spot early PC hits as you do it. Here, at least, apples are later to flower than the stone fruit, so they serve as the early warning system for curc activity. I have sometimes done a postbloom spray of the apples for them, either just before or while bagging, usually with a spray for scab or CAR
Once bagged, the apples are on their own and the work is done until harvest
I used to remove the bags and wash the apples before storage, mostly because of the earwigs and earwig poop. But I discovered that apples stored in their bags seem to keep longer w/o shriveling - this requires further experiment in some other year when I have apples to store
As far as I know Bob Vance said his dad has uses ziplock plastic bags on peaches successfully. He posted pictures of how the bags were prepared on one of the threads.
I tried it. It did not work,for me. I have brown rot issue and peaches in plastic bags trapped too much moisture and made it worse for me. But I did not prepare the plastic bags the exact same way as Bob’s dad did.
I bagged apples once. Then about 80% of them fell on the ground (June drop). The remaining ones did ok except many of them trapped PC inside the bags (the seal around the stem wasn’t tight enough) and those apples were stung about 20 times. I think if i would have sprayed early and thinned to the king apple and then bagged just those I would have had more success. It doesn’t matter because the squirrels take the apples in bags too which i found out. I do remember the bagged ones that made it to near maturity looked very good.
Yeah, i think moisture would be a big thing for me. I know we get long stretches of heavy dew in the mornings, rain at nights, etc where i could very easily see the fruits rotting away if anything would get trapped.
@BobVance. I remember you posting this but at the time I wasn’t interested in bagging peaches. Times have changed and now that I’m interested I can’t find it. I hate to ask but if you could point myself and others to that post I would be grateful. Thanks, Bill
It sounds like i am having better luck, but i am still probably a month from harvest on my Superior plum and Redhaven. Probably 10% of the plums and peaches have a mark from some fruit burrowing insect but they showed up around the time of CM egg hatch. After petal fall I sprayed, sprayed, sprayed Surround + sulfur every time it looked thin. Apples, two plums, and a peach as well as some roses and oranamentals got the Surround plus Bonide Sulfur (ornamentals got it for deer and rabbit deterrent).
I started bagging apples about 2 weeks after petal fall I think. I use the panty hose socks from GrowOrganic.com. I had June drop from about memorial day weekend until I left for vacation June 8. I haven’t lost apples since even in that wind we had last week.
I tried bagging peaches and plums but it was too early and I knocked a few off and decided it wasn’t worth the risk. In retrospect I might have been knocking off poorly pollinated or otherwise abored fruit.
AFAIK I have zero PC damage in my home orchard. It can’t be from lack of PC though as there are multiple apple trees, pears, and peaches in my neighborhood as well as wild plums in the nearest wooded area. Pears and apples my dad had 15 mi away got hammered by PC because i couldnt get to them enough for Surround, but I did get to them in time for CM.
I put out a CM trap at petal fall. When I had a real biofix I sprayed Spinosad after about 250 DD on all trees at the rec rate for apples with Nufilm. I use a higher rate of nufilm than on the label because I found a study that used like 5 or 10 ml/gal and reported some pesticide loss rates and saw better results at the higher rates.
So far I am having acceptable results with the organic approach. I will probably always bag a decent number of apples. I probably bagged nearly 80 this year and lost 25% to June drop.
Time will tell… I also can say I have no detectable scab but maybe an unhealthy Dabinett with CAR.
I care much more about my apples than stone fruit. They are more my thing because all my varieties are supposed to store well. So we probably have different goals…
Anyways, sorry for the dissertation… I think it can be done, but maybe not if brown rot shows up.
I actually had trouble finding it as well. I eventually located it by finding the “bag” pic on my computer and getting the date. Then I looked at what I posted that day and found it. I bet that search would have worked, except I didn’t actually say “dad” or “father” anywhere in the post- just “he”, as the post was a continuation of the thread.
Here’s an interesting (to me) behavior:
This Google search pulls it up as the first result:
site:growingfruit.org father peach corners
But, searching with the built-in search, yields no results for “father peach corners”. I think the GF search looks at each post as a self-contained entity, while Google looks at each thread.
For about ten years I controlled brown rot with organic methods only. It’s not impossible. But, you need to be picky on what varieties and fruit types. I wouldn’t even bother with European plums. Also location and sun is paramount. I have a row of peaches and plums in an area that doesn’t get any afternoon sun and I think that’s not a good idea at all. Even the PC is worse, the fruits seem more vulnerable. Vigorous trees put up more resistance to the bugs.
I stored some apples in the bags this past winter and they kept much better than the un-bagged apples. Part of this could be due to the skin problems that the un-bagged apples had, but I think that a lot of it is the higher humidity levels in the bags.
Here is the last of the 2015 harvest, a few Goldrush. The bagged ones are still pretty good, while the un-bagged (and shriveled) ones have been serving as bait for my traps (with a bit of peanut butter).
I asked, but he doesn’t have any peaches this year (bad frost event in April). This is the same type of bag, but on an apple. From his email:
the peaches did fine with the small bags I use. I lost a few, but at least 80 to 90 percent came through fine. Some dropped, some critters got in an improper seal, none were lost to the brown fungus. You might mention that I try to double cut the top zipper so that there is a tight fit on either side of the stem. Might have to experiment a little to get it right. The apples are getting big enough now that I can’t keep the zipper zipped.
Resurrecting the clemson bags. Ive used zipper sandwich bags, thought these might be better.
But what r u supposed to do with the leaf cluster? Cut off the leaves? Put them inside?
Its a wee bit better for peaches. But my apples have so much leaf … i cant figure out what to do.
Not feeling like this is going to work without tearing off or shading out way too much leaf.( I can get them on ‘ok’ - the wire needs to be longer i think. )
Anyway. Have yall come up with a way that works for these bags? Or are they just not great particularly for apples?
