North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Hal Love" <lovehd@comcast.net>]

Hector,

 

I find that birds are a big problem, often damaging much of the fruit before the raccoons get to them. My solution has been to bag the individual clusters with nylon "organza bags". These are nylon mesh bags with pull strings sold for weddings. They come in lots of sizes, and are relatively cheap and can be used over many times.

 

You used to list several Munson varieties in your catalog. Which were the most (or least) disease resistant for you?

 

Hal

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Hector Black

To: North American Fruit Explorers

Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 11:06 AM

Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Grape selection, southeast

I'm with Lon on that (and probably a lot more).  We've tried many varieties of bunch grapes and fine that between the Japanese beetles and diseases, we get very little result.  Muscadines are not eaten by the beetles and have few diseases. 

     The only problem we had was with racoons harvesting.  They got 'em all.  We used to wrap with bird netting.  That's a major pain.Then put bird tanglefoot on all the support poles of the trellis (they like their paws clean), but the best thing we did was trap them and cart them off.  I've heard that this can be rough on them, but it's hard for me to kill them.  The marshmallows in the trap really worked.  A NAFEXer's idea.   Hector Black zone 6 middle TN