North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Before the big freeze I had spread sheets under my big plum tree and also 
went around moving a couple of sheets under smaller peach trees.  Tapping 
got me a total of 120 curculios.  If half were females and each can destroy 
300 fruits, that would mean they could have destroyed 18,000 fruits.  I had 
decided it would be worth my while to spray the peaches with Neem and keep 
the sheets under the big tree and keep tapping it.  By keeping one favored 
tree for bait, and making the peaches taste bad, I figured I could actually 
kill most of the curculios and eventually reach a point in the year where I 
could stop spraying.  I am pretty good at spotting bugs, so it was an easy 
matter to pick up and crunch the weevils, not to mention very satisfying!  I 
could have dumped the debris collected by tapping into a bucket of soapy 
water, but then I wouldn't have had any idea how many curculio the were or 
whether the numbers were dropping.  For those of you who still have the 
chance of getting crops, you might want to try this and report in.  For 
others like Dennis, do you think this is a reasonably good approach?  I 
don't dare use chemicals.   Donna