Hi Guys,
I am working with the major Chinese producer of these bags. Last year our club, MidFEx.org, tried a slew of the two piece red and brown bags, WITHOUT the 3 cm extended leg, BUT having the wire along the side and the drain hole, and the consensus was they don’t stay on. (The idea is the outer bag made of brown Kraft paper is removed a week or three before harvest, leaving the red cellophane like inner bag to color up the apple.) So my thinking was let’s get the same two piece bag assembly with the inner wire along the side also extended 3 cm out to help initial assembly as well as help keeping them on the tree. Apparently no one over there makes the two piece bag that way, and are also unwilling to do it. The Clemson bag is considered a Peach bag by the several Chinese companies who make bags. All this technology was started in Japan what twenty years ago, and the bags and production machinery (which is key) were imported to China and cloned and an industry was born. By the way it is very hard to assemble the two piece bag without the extended leg on olive size apples. You often pull the apples off when trying. If I cannot succeed in obtaining two piece brown outer red inner bags with the extended leg, this year our club will probably go with the Clemson white bag. I don’t know whether white or brown bags are the larger squirrel deterrent which is a big issue because squirrels learn very fast. TBD.
