Got my Clemson bags today

Clemson bags work really well for me. We had over 200 peaches last year and I saw not a single plum curculio larva (or any other kind of larva) in a bagged peach. I sprayed twice with permethrin (one of those sprays also included propiocanazole) before putting the bags on when the fruit was fingernail sized. No sprays after that. I saw a couple fruit in bags with brown rot but that’s it. It you don’t mind the work of putting them on, they save a lot of work later on and also seem to prevent bird pecks for me. But don’t expect them to help with furry critters. I have other methods for those.

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It’s good that @barry pointed out about spraying insecticide and pesticide before bagging. It is recommended by Clemson, too,

I have very high pest pressure in my orchard. I spray the first insecticide as soon as shuck split. If not, I will have plum curculio bite marks on those tiny peaches that are too tiny to bag.

Then, my 2nd spray is a combo of insecticide and fungicide. By then, if peachlets are big enough to bag, the bagging is recomnende to be done a day after the spray.

Sometimes, nature may not cooperate and it rains too much, I may need to spray the combo one more time before bagging.

  • You need to spray both insecticide and fungicide a day before you bag. Using Clemson bags does not mean spray free. It means spray a lot less.

  • make sure you close the top of a bag tightly. If moisture can get it, a chance of that peach develops brownrot in the bag is high. Properly closed bags, yield very good results.

  • If bags are not well-secured, they will be blown off on windy days.

  • When you thin peaches, think about a position of those peaches you leave on the tree. You want to leave those peaches in a position that is easy for you to reach and bag.

Ask me how I know :rofl:

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Yeah if I don’t spray insecticide before bagging then just about every single peach fruitlet will abort with a PC larva in it either just before or shortly after bagging. I guess I could try to bag earlier but its hard to tell at that point which ones are going to hang on.

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These are the ones that I bought. I think the price is about the same as the Clemson bags. I think they are easier to put onto the fruits.

Organza Bags

Then I sew a strip of scare tape to the bottom. Im an average sewing person but it is very easy and fast. I just line them up on the sewing machine and sew one after another, a few per minute.

scare tape

All experience is local, but for me, not a single fruit in an organza / scare tape bag was touched by birds or bugs or squirrels last year. However, we dont have a lot of squirrels any way.

The scare tape, without the bags, is excellent for cherries and berries. I cant say if no fruit was touched, but I got tons of fruit last year when normally it all gets eaten. Plus the trees and bushes are quite festive :grinning: I bunch one end and use a twist tie to attach those to the branches near the fruits.

Edit. I forgot to add, I put cuts in the scare tape so it wont act like little sails. Plus I think a small breeze might make them “flutter” more and confuse birds. I don’t do that when it’s without the bags.

Organza bags cannot protect against insects like plum curculio or OFM. They lay eggs through the bags. I have that happened to me several times.

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That would move me towards the Clemson bags then, I think. I think we dont have the plum curculios here.

I’d be worried about brown rot getting in those organza bags.

plum curculio don’t come west of the rockies (thank god). I tried finding the reason and couldn’t nail it down, maybe something about our low summer humidity not supporting their life cycle

thanks for the amazon links and ideas! I’m near you so your experience is really valuable

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Not entirely true. A non -breathing squirrel will never take a fruit. Proven 100% success rate!!!

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