The bagging starts

Bought some Clemson Fruit Tree Bags at the end of last season for my peaches. Sprayed them once early early this morning. Decided to give it a whirl tonight right before it got too dark. Grabbed a small handful and went out. Bags went on pretty easy. Little hard to get them around the leaves at times, but I think it’s due to me probably waiting a tad too long as most of these peaches are probably a little larger than a quarter. I’ll test the bags his year and see about next. I can’t remember how many I bought but I think it was enough for a few seasons.

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This is my first year to bag peaches and I found it a difficult task securing the bag around such a short stem. I only bagged ten but the effort will be worth it to me if I can get a high quality fruit.

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You definitely have better dexterity than I do. I put them on this morning. After about 15 bags, I gave up. I found it difficult to gather the top of the bag in a nice flod and twist tie it well.

On several of my peaches, Leaves were in the way. Peach position on a branch was not alway easy to put a bag on, bags’ stiffness made it harder to manipulate. All in all, I am not able to use them as well as I hope for.

I now am working on cutting perforated bread bags to size. I can get them on peaches much easier and a lot faster.

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Will be preparing my bags tonight, I’m always a week or two behind Mamuang! Still raining here, so no spray yet. This is very frustrating. Will net my peach, cherry, pear, and plum trees, currants and berries.

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Organza bag on the left, Clemson paper bag on the right. Perforated bread bags in the background


Perforated bread bag on left, organza bag on right.

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Of the three materials, organza bags are the easiest to apply. Too bad, the site I ordered from said they were sold out.

Perforated bread bags are not bad. You need a small size stapler for easy maneuvering and stapling. Preparing bags to be used take longer time than cutting up plastic zip lock apple bags.

Clemson bags, I personally think the twist tie is not long enough and the gathering up the top of the bags to be tied needs skills which I have not mastered.

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Ok, here is what I got so far… right now I’m very very perplexed… I put the bags on right but am running into a issue that may make me go away from using them. I just went out to take a look and see how they are holding up and pulled off about 8-10 that were just spinning in the wind. Looking at the bottom of the bag I am finding the peach broke clean off. All this in less than 8 hours. He wind has been bad but not terrible, we have had much much worse. If they cannot survive being in the bags with this little amount of wind they will not make it the week.

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Sean,
The top of the bag should be over a branch where a peach is. This way, it is not supposed to be blown away.

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Yep, they are. That’s how I noticed them spinning. They were wrapped around the branch just twirling away. Think of it this way, if I were to have wrapped it around the peach stem itself it would be on the ground, not still attached to the tree.

I have an email in to Juan Carlos Meglar at Clemson to see if he has any insight into the issue. I’m hoping these were just going to drop anyways so no real worry. I’ll check them again tomorrow to see if I have any more. Good news is that all the ones that dropped so far were just about the same size (less than a quarter) and my bigger peaches (50 cent pieces) are still going strong… oh, and all 1 million (seems like that many) Saturn peaches are still good.

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Just went out to take a picture to find 4 more… wtf?!?

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Mine are almost all the same size as in your pic. Nothing at a quarter size. Hope you will let us know what that professor says.

I have a hard time using the bags so I abandon them for now. I believe of all the three kinds of bags I use, Clemson bags may protect peaches from rain/moisture the best. That could really help prevent brown rot.

Well i bagged my gala last night, ended up covering round 55 after i cut off near 200.

I used ziplock quart bags. This is where confusion sets in, i get they would need preferation for air flow (which i didnt so). However would holes allows pest access to them which defeats the purpose of the bag to begin with?

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You only need the sandwich bag size. Cut two bottom corners off for air ventilation. No need for perforated bags but it does not hurt… Target pests like coddling moths or plum curculios do not enter those holes. The problem could be earwigs.

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I have only squished earwigs in my apple bags or pear bags. I find trying to bag peaches or plums tedious. I also usually have so many it is better to net the tree. Also time to start netting the black currants, as the birds are eating them while they are green this year!

Thanks Gents!

OK, got my reply back from Juan Carlos. He believes what I was seeing is june drop. His thoughts were that with the bags being on it just accelerated the process (having the pressure put on with the bag moving the fruit ever so slightly). When I get home tonight I’ll go out and check again and see if I have any more.

One thing I did ask him but haven’t heard back was this… How is everyone going about checking ripeness? Without the bags last season a nice gentle press near the stem let me know. Some of my trees were nice enough that the harvest period lasted almost 2 weeks. I would hate to have to remove EVERY bag every day or so to check, nor would I want to remove them and leave them off and allow birds or other critters have a go at them.

Thanks for the illustration, Mamuang! [quote=“Sean2280, post:10, topic:11261”]
Just went out to take a picture to find 4 more… wtf?!?
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I understand there is a natural shedding of excess fruits (called “June drop”) around this time of year; these may just be more noticeable after the bagging, but may have been due to be dropped regardless of bagging. This is what I have read–those which fall off with bagging were most likely going to fall off anyway. Let us hope so.

I lose well over 25% to drops each year after bagging. It is frustrating.

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I’ve not experienced noticeable June drops of peaches. Maybe, we could ask @Olpea about June drops of peaches.

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I’ve also noticed fruit dropping lately. Specially from the two branches I have nets on.

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