North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["" <rmelrose@danvilleVT.net>]

Mark, thanks for the pointer to the gardenweb discussion. It sounds as
though this is not going to fool the squirrels -- for whom I have some
respect as an enemy -- but I will give it a try in the hope that the local
squirrels are dim. In fact it took them a few years to learn that plums are
edible (they learnt on a Santa Rosa I used to have before it died of some
sort of aggressive canker) but once they learnt, the knowledge seems to have
passed to subsequent generations.

Unfortunately the wrapping, and spraying (thanks Bruce), suggestions are
impractical here. The squirrels have access higher in the tree from all
sides -- the houses are close together, there is a phone pole and a crab
apple. So there is no chance of keeping them out of the tree.

As I said, I am trying some baggies -- but I suspect the plums will
split. In Vermont where I have apples growing the bags work very well
against the various bugs, but when I tried them on pears (these were
Summer Crisp, Luscious and Golden Spice) they split badly. Since the pears
don't suffer much from bug attack I have given up on that and just do a
couple of hundred apples.

Richard


> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:01:13 -0500
> From: "Mark or Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Bagging, squirrels and plums
> To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <002001c6883b$910045c0$03000004@u3gjg>
> Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hi Richard
> 
> Last month there was a post  by Nathan Torgerson which listed a forum
> discussing bagging fruit.
> http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fruit/msg0501490712645.html?51
> 
> You can read about one lady who had a terrible time with tree rats.  Bagging
> the fruit didn't help.  In fact she indicates the squirrels learned to
> associate bags = food, and tore the bags apart to get to the fruit.  She
> tried several  different bags with no success.
> 
> Alan Haigh wrote about a technique that sounds much more promising in the
> last issue of Pomona.  He suggested wrapping the trunk of the tree with
> aluminum flashing.  He staples it around the trunk of the tree and the
> little bugers have nothing to grab onto to.  I don't know how  well this
> would work for you if your tree it too close to the fence.  They could
> obviously hop on a limb from the fence.  Perhaps if there were some way to
> keep them off the fence?  One drawback of the aluminum flashing would be
> that it may provide a place for borer attack.  I wonder if the flashing has
> to be installed directly on the trunk?  Could the fruitier install a wire
> cage around the tree, leaving plenty of distance between the trunk and the
> cage, then attach the flashing to the cage?
> 
> Alan indicated to flash the tree the flashing must be 24" wide and start a
> couple feet from the base.  If two pieces of flashing are needed, install
> the bottom piece first so the squirrels don't have a "lip" to grab.
> 
> Mark Angermayer
> Zone 5 Kansas
>