Hi all. 1) Are organza bags effective for protecting pears from squirrels and birds? 2) what size of organza bags do you recommend and where do you buy them? Seems like the 5x7" are too small for pears.
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This thread about bagging is long but has a lot of good info about bagging.
Short answer, no bag can stop squirrels.
Birds, probably dark color or paper bags so they won’t see the fruit inside.
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I’ve had good luck with them. A Scott innovation as I recall. Minimal squirrel pressure here. (Thank-you coyotes.)
I’ve had a couple that the crows (Mother Nature’s juvenile delinquents) pecked through, evidently just to let me know that they weren’t fooled.
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If a soft, ripe fruit presses up against the bag, bees and June beetles will get to the fruit. It does help deter them, but it isn’t perfect.
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@tubig I am in central MA and have high pest pressure.
This was by squirrel 2 days ago. One several organza bags. I put the organza bags on my pears to differentiate one variety fron another on this multi grafted tree. It is NOT to protect against squirrels because I know these bags can’t.
Some pears I like more so I use a better quality nylon bags. That does not stop squirrels from trying. This was this morning.
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Has anyone experimented if the color makes any difference?
I use them on figs… blueberries… blackberries… grapes.
They do help with birds and with swd, hornets, yellowjackets, wasp, other fruitflies.
Doubt they would help much with squirrel.
With larger bags you can cover a large cluster of grapes, blueberries, blackberries.
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Dark colors like black or dark blue could help camouflage red or orange fruit from the eyes of birds.
It does not deter squirrels as they can smell your ripening fruit. Organza bags do not protect against PC or OFM, no matter what color.
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I use these stiffer plastic ones, you can bend them some to keep them off the fruit. they did pretty good last year against bird and bigger insects. the squirrels didn’t take any off but that might be different this year. I think I got a crazy number like a thousand for thirty dollars.
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Scroll up to post #5, you will see the work of squirrels on these nylon bags.
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they tried! it looks like they didn’t get as much as with the organza, so that’s at least something
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@tubig … i have 100 … 4x6 bags and 50 … 7x10 bags.
I got mine from amazon a few years back… i know that i have used them two growing seasons so far…
They are surprisingly resilient… and if you take care of them, wash them, etc… they will last you a few seasons. Mine are going into season 3 and most are still looking pretty good.
The 4x6 work great on figs… you do have to learn how to tie them on tightly (without breaking your fig off)… but once you get that down… when your figs first start showing ripe color… tie on a bag… tightly… and 3 4 5 days later you have a very nice clean fig… no ants, wasp, hornets, fruitflies, japanese beetles.
A couple years ago SWD pest were bad here on my blackberries in July… i got lots of perfectly ripened blackberries with no swd larvae… thanks to the bags.
Birds will wear my ripening blueberries out… they get more than we do… but the bags do help with that. You can cover small clusters with the small bags… and larger clusters with the larger bags.
Same for my seedless concord grapes… birds will get the large majority… if I dont bag them.
Good luck to you.
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Is this only if the fruit/fruitlet is touching the bag? Or can they cut their way through or otherwise breach the bag even if not?
I typically bag apples with plastic sandwich bags and they seem to be fairly effective. I only have a total of 8 or so peaches this year (late freeze) and I have organza bags on them now. To experiment I put organza bags on a few apples as well.
Thanks.
I think if the birds or animals can smell the fruit ripening, it’s too hard for them to resist, so what I did last year is using a large plastic bag that I got from the Korean store, they are much larger then the average plastic bag from the supermarket, I recalled I was able to save some fruit till full ripe. I might try this method again.
I have not seen PC or OFM cut through the bags without fruit touching the bags. What I have seen was that they laid eggs on the fruit through the flimsy organza bags. The oozing and the frass was all there. I took pics and posted them somewhere on the forum.
Ziplock plastic bags work fine on apples. I used them on pears and it caused some russeting so I stopped.
@BobVance’s dad used plastic ziplock bags on peaches successful. I used Clemson paper bags instead.
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I bagged several clusters of deerberry on a couple bushes in the edge of my woods and something (possibly chipmonks) chewed thru the bags and got most of the fruit.
I finally did get to eat a few deerberry and found that they were quite bland tasting. The chipmonks sure thought they were worth fighting for.
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I have used metal screen made bag on peaches one year. Several bags were torn and peaches were gone. I don’t think any bag will stop squirrels. Dark colors may fool the birds but squirrels can smell the aroma from a ripen fruits. If you work from home, setting up a desk under the peach tree works the best
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I have used green bags on apples and tomatoes and they did work to some degree against squirrel pressure. They definitely helped against insect pests. At the time I lived in a suburban neighborhood with large lots and a big population of squirrels and chipmunks. They didn’t hold up as well when we went through a lengthy period of mild drought conditions; it seemed the animals were more desperate for fluid so they found creative ways into the trees and ripped the bags. After the season ended I wondered if providing fresh water might have protected my crops.
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- When do you place them on blueberries and plums?
I saw one of my plums was already pecked at a mere 1cm diameter size but I’m afraid tying the others up this early would snap off the fruitlets and defeat the purpose.
- When you tied over an entire branch(when short enough), did it seem to affect the flavor? Wondering if lessening the leaves exposure to the sun this way would affect the flavor.