I reviewed this impressive discussion on bagging or covering fruit with a wide variety of bag types. I have bagged apples and pears for about 15 years in large quantities. I have mostly used paper lunch bags, stapled at the top to keep them on the fruit. For pears I would use nylon try-on socks. I bagged the fruit when the fruit is about 1/2 to 3/4 inches in diameter. I, and my hired help, would typically bag between 2000-4000 fruit per year on about 8-9 mature trees. My percentage of good fruit to bad was about 85-90%. The paper bags were more effective than the nylon bags. However, the paper bags would make a lot of pears blow off in our strong winds here. Last year in the spring I learned about Kootenay Covers. I tried four of them on a pear tree and three cherry trees. The results were very good. The individual bags took about two days per tree with four well-trained workers putting the little bags on. The Kootenay Covers took about 15-20 minutes per tree to install the bag. This was a huge time and dollar savings for me, as I pay the workers to put on the small bags and the Kootenay Covers. The Kootenay Covers kept out 100% of the codling moths from the pear tree. I put two pheromone traps in with the pears to see if any moths were coming in the cover. There was not a single moth in either of the traps inside the cover. The cherries were also effectively 100% free of the cherry fruit fly maggots, at least for the ones I opened and examined. Since all of the cherries were tart cherries of several kinds, I examined hundreds, maybe 1000’s, of them in the process of pitting them for freezing. The covers also kept all the birds out, which is very important where I live. We have hundreds of bird visits every day. We do not have squirrels here. Nor do we have deer in our orchard. We occasionally have raccoons, but not last year that I know of. I am interested to hear reports of other users of Kootenay Covers, if there are any that follow this thread. I am interested in what kinds of bugs you have in your area, and if you have any experience with squirrels or deer trying to eat through the covers.
Where are you located?
Any pics of your Kootenay Covers?
I also have Clemson bags flying off or flapping/rotating in our strong winds. Lost a handful of nects to wind. Any solutions? Thinking about securing with clothespins.
I did not take a lot of pictures. You can see a variety of pictures at kootenaycovers.com and at fruittreecovers.com
. My orchard is near Salt Lake City, UT. Here is one picture that my daughter took.
At my old orchard in Idaho, I used Havaheart traps for squirrels. I would stake them to the ground using u-shaped metal stakes. These kept the squirrels from tipping over the trap.
I looked it up. You are lucky because Utah is arid. You don’t have to deal with brown rot. The lady inventor also lives where there is no brown rot.
With prevalent brown rot in the east coast, using this cover will post a dilemma. The cover needs to go in as soon as petal fall. I could get fungicide spray once before I cover my tree with Kootenay Covers.
Unfortunately, one spray of fungicide may not be enough to stop brown rot. I would need to take a cover off to spray fungicide again before putting it back on.
We have a member here @galinas who sewed a cover for her tree similar to Kootenat Covers.
You are right. We do not have brown rot here. I have been reading about that this week. The articles I was reading were about brown rot on peaches. What else does it attack?
Brown rot is what stop many people in the east from growing stone fruit.
By year 3, my peaches on the whole tree were covered with brown rot. It is only get worse without synthetic fungicide spray. It is either not growing stone fruit or spraying with synthetics.
The point here is not to place cover directly on the tree. I use frames - permanent or temporary, and try to make sure it doesn’t lays on foliage and gives room for some growth.
To protect against plum curculio, you need to gather the material and wrap it to the trunk of the trees. The permanent structure will be in a way of wrapping.
Only if you had it last year. If the tree was protected - you are OK
A just realized that there is a way to hang net on permanent structure and still tie it around the trunk.
Start with cube shaped net with all four vertical ribs closed(no entree)
Put the net over your tree so whole net is inside your frame
From outside the net lift and tie each corner of the net to the corresponding corner of the frame.
Get INSIDE the net
Use clumps to attach horizontal top ribs of the net to the frame from INSIDE the net.
Use clumps on vertical ribs of the net as well starting from top going down from INSIDE the net, leave enough free net so it can reach the trunk
Get out of the net and tie bottom of the net around the trunk.
You could also apply clamps to the frame from outside, fixing the net to a frame.
Yes, it was just more complicated to write so it is clear… You will have to clump double net in this case…
I just took a workshop from Tonia Lordy at Home Orchard Educational Center (successor to Home Orchard Society).
She said Surround is kaolin clay, and it works by containing the scent of the fruit, so pests can’t find them. Some pests, anyway.
People here including me have used Surround spray for sometimes. It is not totally effective. It flakes irritate bugs from doing damage on fruit.
If you search the word Surround using the Search function (a looking glass at the top right corner of the page), you will get a lot of results.
Hambone, are you on AncestryDNA? I’m looking for Hambone0118
don’t think that’s me.
Thank you.