Ziplock Apples

Next week, I'll be picking about 300 perfect Gala apples from my tree, and I haven't sprayed it since June. Each apple is inside its own ziplock sandwich bag.

This method is labor-intensive, thus only appropriate for small orchards, but I consider the results worth the trouble.

Here in Illinois there are three major pests of apples: the plum curculio, the apple maggot, and the coddling moth. The plum curculio attacks the fruit shortly after petal fall, and it makes a distinctive-shaped cut in the skin of the apple. The other two pests arrive later, in June and July, and the bagging keeps them from attacking the apples as they develop.

To control the plum curculio, it is still necessary to spray at least once after petal fall. I bag the fruit in June, after the normal fruit drop has thinned it out and the apples are starting to grow. This can be done at the same time as you thin the remaining apples, if you do it by hand. I use generic ziplock sandwich bags and bag one apple in each cluster, thinning out the rest. I look for apples that are scarred from the plum curculio, if any, and thin those out. The bag zips over the stem. It's important to make a small cut in the bottom of each bag, because otherwise rain will make its way into the bag and fill it up with water. After this, no more insecticide sprays to control these pests will be needed for the rest of the year, and the apples will be worm-free.

Very good.

I have a bunch of stretchy nylon footies, but have not tried them. I find here that the plum curculio is 98% of the apple trouble for me and I too have not sprayed since June I believe.

I don't know any way but spraying to control the curculio, but I find it does a lot more damage to the stone fruit than the apples [and almost none to pears]. I don't really mind the catfaced apples, but if I didn't spray for the curculios, I'd have no plums or nectarines.

But the apple maggot makes a real mess of the fruit. I used to use the sticky red lures, which didn't get them all, and now I get worm-free fruit. Once the bags are in place, I really don't have to do anything else with the apples until it's time to pick them - except answer the questions from the neighbors - "What's all that on your apple tree?"

I have little or no apple maggot, but early curculio which Imidan w70 works pretty well on.

You put baggies around 300 apples? Now I feel lazy. You will really be glad you did when you bite into a juicy "fresh" apple. Do you do this every year? DM

Well, it is labor-intensive, for sure.

I tried it for the first time last year. I was reading about people who use paper sandwich bags on their apples, stapling each bag. Now THAT is labor-intensive! I thought that ziplock bags would be a lot easier to use.

And it's an incentive to thin the apples with sufficient ruthlessness. If you do that by hand, instead of chemically, it's not THAT much more work to do the bagging.

But there is certainly a limit to how many trees I'd be willing to do.

LTilton- I had read about using the little paper bags with built in twist ties to keep them on. I searched online, but never found any in the US, only Australia. Anyway, I had considered ziplocks, but didn't know if it would suffocate the fruit. Since you've had success, I think I will try that next year. What size is the small cut in the bottom of each bag? Thanks for posting this.

Jen

The cut is small, I think 1/4 inch is enough to let the water out.

I used to cut off one bottom corner, but it happened too often that the uncut corner hung lower and filled up with water, so now I cut a slit in the middle of the bottom.

The only drawback is sometimes the earwigs crawl into the bags late in August and eat a hole in an apple. But by August the apples don't really need the protection anymore, and I think the earwigs would get into the apples anyway.

Now I'm experimenting to see how well the apples keep if I leave the bags on, open at the top [earwigs removed]. I'm hoping this will make the atmosphere more humid and retard shriveling in storage.

Thanks LT. My DH is keen to put the ziplocks on my peaches now in the hopes that the birds won't peck them and the squirrels won't take bites. We'll see!

Thanks again.

I considered ziplocks on my nectarines, but they don't have stems to zip the bags around.

Also, I fear that the bags might make them more susceptible to brown rot. I do a fungicide spray for brown rot early in August as the fruit starts to think about ripening, and I have to wonder if the bags would keep this from working.

I think bagging would work well for pears, but I'm not troubled here by pear pests very much and always get more fruit than I can use, so I don't bother.

btw, I recently read a report from someone else experimenting with apple-bagging. They tried the nylon footies but discovered that they didn't sufficiently discourage the insects.

They're going back to the ziplock bags.

Well, the squirrels must have read my mind. They attacked the peach tree. Most of the fruit was on the ground this morning. It's a young tree and doesn't have much fruit yet.

Next year, I will do better... as always.