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nafex - [NAFEX] Apple bagging/thinning:

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  • From: "fuwa fuwa usagi" <fuwafuwausagi@muchomail.com>
  • To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Apple bagging/thinning:
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 10:42:43 -0700


And a big fluffy bunny hello to all my friends out there in NAFEX land…

Gina writes

Well, I've been out of town, and I finally bagged my apples. It was
too late - every one was already damaged. I figured I'd go ahead and
try to prevent additional damage, and get some practice. I ended up
keeping 3 apples on one cultivar and 2 on the other, which is enough
to taste if they make it through the season.

But I had a lot of trouble thinning. It was hard prying those little
apples off the tree, and I think I killed one of the "keepers" in the
attempt. I just plucked them. What should I do, use heavy-duty
scissors, or pruning clippers?


Me:

The fluffy one was also delayed this year. In fact I started wrapping
yesterday. I would say about 1 in 30 was okay…so that still leaves a whole
lot of fruit for me to wrap in newspaper.

I use a pair of wire cutters to snip off the apples I do not want.

The primary damage to my crop if curculio and coddling moth. My experience
for my conditions is that both forms of damage MAY be minimized. It seems
you can scrape off recent curculio damage with you finger nail or a knife
blade. The fruit seems to heal over fine.

And I have noticed that some coddling moths damage already seems to have
exited the fruit on my trees, so you might bag or wrap any such examples just
to see what happens.

If I do not have enough “good” fruit left I may experiment with this again.
I already dug some curculio out of the few plums I have this year(very late
snow and frost hit).

One saving grace for me this year was the weird blossoming time. It seemed
like my Liberty took almost 5 full weeks to blossom. With a portion in bloom
each week. Same with the pears. Yet Cherries and Plums blossomed all at
once as usual. Interesting year.

Of course experiences like the above make me glad that as a “when ever
nothing else occupies my time” hobby gardener I can simply drive to a grocery
store for staples – LOL!!!! God bless the farmers of the United States of
America!!!

Gina writes:

I did learn that I can't wait until "cherry" size to bag. Next year,
I will try bagging the whole clusters as soon as they set, then un-
bag to thin and re-bag the remainder. Of course, the crab apples on
the same tree all look perfect.

My reply:

You could. You could also just blast the tree with a general purpose spray
early on…maybe even two of them, and then go to bagging. It seems logical to
me that if you start bagging at say ¼ size the residue has to be fairly
minimal.

I have done that in the past…bagging around the first week of June after a
couple of sprays and I have been very happy with the result in terms of
time/benefit. I have to blast my plums about 2-4 times a season to get a
full crop anyways so I hit the apples a time or two when I do it.

All the best…

The fluffy bunny


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