Mark,
If you have scab fungal spores
out and about when you bag apples, whichever cover you use, youll get scab
on your fruit. One of our apple growers here swears by his solution
for scab.
He says the rain-loving scab
spores pop up in the spring during wet weather from any fall litter left on
the ground. They just drift up into the air. If you dont control it, the
scab gets to be more scab which begets more infections, which turns into a
scab epidemic.
He says his solution is to
simply let his grass grow in the orchard. He lets it get as high as can
be. Only mows when the rainy season is over. He says the fungal
spores are trapped in the tall grasses and dont get near his fruit
trees. When the weather turns drier and warmer, hell mow the orchard
down completely. Ive seen his apples no scab.
Found the following info which
might help your raccoon situation
Raccoons and
Skunks
NOTE: Skunks have been known to go
after sweet corn just like raccoons! To add to that not much will stop
raccoons.
Raccoons usually have litters of
between two to seven babies. They travel what we call "runs" and will use
the same runs generation after generation for decades. They can easily scale
high wooden fences. They are nocturnal and do their scavenging at
night.
1. Plant anything
with prickly foliage to deter them such as squash plants, oriental
poppies, globe thistle, pumpkins, Kentucky Wonder pole beans etc. Raccoons
have incredibly sensitive toes.
2. To trap raccoons: use baits
like sardines, marshmallows, or honey soaked bread.
3. Surround the area with a
horizontal border that coons and skunks don't like to walk over-crumpled up
black plastic, newspaper, or aluminum foil. Hold these in place with some
rocks, landscape pins, or soil.
4. Use mesh fencing or chicken
wire as a horizontal barrier. Raise these slightly above the ground with
some bricks to make it even more of a hassle to cross.
5. Spread naphthalene flakes or
balls around, raccoons hate the taste of this in their paws and they are
said to also aid in repelling skunks.
6. Use any kind of old netting:
fish netting, tennis net, whatever as a barrier. Stake loosely to hold in
place.
7. Use rose bush trimmings as a
barrier, or anything with stickers.
8. Sprinkle a barrier of lime
around the perimeter to be protected.
9. To keep raccoons from getting
the fruit in your trees: wrap a barrier of aluminum or sheet metal 2 feet in
height around the trunk of the tree. Be sure not to make it tight you want
to let your tree trunk breathe.
10. Soak old corn cobs in
vinegar. Place them around the plant to be protected. Supposedly once they
chew on these they will not come back. We found that last season this worked
on both skunks and raccoons for about 2 months. Apparently after that they
got wise and were up to their old tricks.
11. Sprinkle flour around
suspected nesting or sleeping areas.
Judi
Stewart
zone
8
North Olympic
Peninsula
Date:
Wed, 7 May 2008
16:29:22
-0400
From: "Mark
Dorogi" <mddorogi@comcast.net>
Subject: Re:
[NAFEX] covering cherries, fruit bags questions
Maybe I should try
those Maggot
Barriers this year. They cost 6 times as much as ziplock bags, but
still they are only about $.07 per footie. The advantage of the
footies would be that they ?breathe? but I wonder if fungal infections like
scab can find their way through the nylon and still get to the apples.
Scab is heavy around here, although I try to keep the trees sprayed well
until bagging time.
I had the
same issue with bird netting a few years back. Some branches got bent,
particularly on the Montmorency sour cherry, which seems to have weak
branches. You are right, a PVC support structure should be relatively
cheap and effective.
If you
securely tie the netting right to the trunk, will that keep raccoons
out? Or do they just rip it apart and proceed with their
feasting? Apart from eating the fruit, they wreck the trees by
climbing out to the end of branches and breaking them. They just about
destroyed that sour cherry one year. I didn?t realize why the tree was
falling apart I caught a raccoon in the act.
Mark
