I had 80 fruits on my harvester peach tree. My first havest - thanks Growingfruit.org! I attempted to put clemson bags on approximstely half of them. I spayed permethrin at petal fall and again 10 days later. I sprayed bonide infuse 10 days after petal fall. At that point the shuck had already split on a lot of the fruitlets. I began bagging at about 2 weeks after petal fall and thinned while i bagged over a week long period or so.
I checked each peach for larvae and brown rot at harvest. Here are the final numbers:
Bagged: 1/37 had second generation plum curculio larvae.
Nonbagged: 17/43 had 2nd gen pc larvae.
I saw one instance of brown rot and it was on an nonbagged fruit. I saw no damage from first gen pc larvae. The fruits with pc were still mostly edible after cutting out the bad parts. Id say only a 20% loss of flesh on average.
The other thing worth noting is about 20% of fruits regardless of bag treatment had flesh breakdown, but no rot, in a very small cylinder at the bottom tip of the fruit. Kind of like it got overripe way too soon in that area. Maybe something physiological?
I also have a flame prince peach tree treated exactly the same. It ripens in a few weeks so fruit are just starting to swell. I can see that unbagged fruits are getting hammered by pc and maybe stink bugs. My eyeball says it will be 100% of nonbagged ones, and its bad enough that they wont be edible. Not sure what is going on inside the bags because i have not taken the time to peek inside yet.
I just finished bagging all my peaches with Clemson bags.
Organza bags do not work because bugs can lay eggs through the bags. Plastic zip lock sandwich bags have ootebtial to cause rot.
I did some Clemson bags in the past with excellent success. At the time, I did not thin them well and putting bags on was quite difficult.
This year, I thinned like mad, 4 rounds from tiny fruitlets to a thumb size or larger. I found that spacing fruit far apart and leave only fruit on twigs or branches that are in a good position to bag is very helpful.
My bagging skill have greatly improve because of the fruit space and positioning.
I have two full grown peach trees, one small 2 year old peach and one small nectarine tree. Took me a couple of hours a day for about 4 days to finish bagging about 600 fruit. (Estimated from bags used).
Most of my peaches are Sept peaches so it will take a while to find out. My nectarine should ripen by August. I hope the result will be as good as it was in the past.
Another update on clemson bags…
Two out of about 50 bagged fruit had pc larvae on my flame prince peach tree. 49 of 50 nonbagged fruit had larvae. Unfortunately the flame prince ripened very uneven and around a third were turning mealy around the pit but still almost crunchy on the outside. Also had some corking in the flesh. Could that be due to a nutrient deficiency or is that variety prone to that sort of thing?
The Clemson bags kept the bugs off of the peaches but most of them had brown rot. Possibly because of the high humidity in my area. The unbagged peaches didn’t have brown rot since I used an organic spray to keep brown rot under control. Since I still have bags I may bag the peaches early in the season and then remove them a few weeks before ripening.
What is your organic fungicide spray against brown rot?
Before putting on Clemson bags, it is recommended that one sprays fungicide and insecticide a day before bagging.
My problem was I did not have time to bag all peaches in a day.
It took me 3 -4 days to finish. Turned out quite a few peaches have bugs in them. They must have sneaked in during those days.
Ithose peaches with bugs dropped early. There are some with rot but not many. One advantage of bagging is fruit dropped in bags still hanging on the trees, less damaged that way.
It was far from a scientific test. I did have a reduction in brown rot but I did use a synthenic once early in the scean. Next year I may do a proper test by using it exclusively on my Santa Rosa plum or cherry tree. Both get badly damaged by brown rot in my climate.