That's pretty bad. I had a few land on me last year and caught a few feeding on leaves but none got into my bags (maybe because I spray in addition to bag).
This year has been pretty good. I've found no scars on my Cortland or McIntosh, including the June drops. Only one branch on my Arkansas Black got hit bad and they usually don't survive in those apples even when I wasn't spraying. And I haven't seen any on my apple traps.
Since I learned last year they will go after my cherries if I don't spray them but spray the apples my cherries are pretty clean too.

They got all my apples. For the past two years I haven't had to do anything, last year I only bagged half the apples and the other half were fine. But they found me this year and got them all. :(

Next year I'll have to spray something. I was thinking of doing Surround on everything but I'm not sure I can keep up with it with the amount of rain we get in the spring.

Organic is a really tough way to go if you want fruit.

I garden as organically as possible, but the coddling moth has defeated me and I spray the apple trees. I rationalize that my home sprayed fruit is still much less pesticide coated than the fruit from the grocery store that has been shipped in from Chile. Who knows what sort of pesticides they are using there.

I'm not raising fruit just to feed the bugs. If they would take part of the crop, I could probably live with that, but they will destroy every piece of fruit and when the population gets high enough, they move on to all your other fruit trees and destroy that crop 100% while they are at it.

You can combine organic methods with your spray program, and so you will at least cut down on chemicals quite a bit.

Frank,

I'm sorry to hear about your problems with bagging. I have not had the same experience. It is crucial that the bag is closed shut right up to the stem; this is easier to do when the apples get a bit bigger. And before you apply the bags you have to spray something to control curculio -- either insecticide or Surround-- since the curculio come as soon as the apple starts to grow. I've had good success using a few applications of Surround plus bags; no doubt I lost more fruit than I would have with insecticide, but it is not a big deal given the need to thin.

Ya got to hand it to Harvestman for laying out a really good, effective and minimal spray program. 2 pesticide sprays and my apples are really clean. No scab no bites, execpt for a tree that bloomed early and I didnt get to right away. Its dying and I just use it as a pollinator anyways.

Frank:

I know what you mean about going to fruits from other horticultural crops. For the last 30+ years I've either been in horticulture school, raising or researching vegetable and ornamental crops. The tree fruits are a whole new ball game, can't imagine embarking on them with no hort. experience and education. It takes a lot of patience (mostly with myself) and research as well as a willingness to fail and continue forward. A huge difference with perennial vs annual crops is you can have a complete failure with an annual and move on often replanting the same season, problems with perennials can set you back years.

Sorry to hear about your PC, blessed to not have to deal with them myself.

Michael

Some of these baggies were as tight as they were going to get and they still had damage. Those PC must be able to fit through a tight spot. Not everything is damaged, but a lot is. I left some of the damaged ones, because PC larvae only live if the fruit falls? (something about the fast growth rate of apples crushing the larvae). Just sucks to spend all that effort and then get very little in return, especially when one or two sprays would have done the same work. I'm thinking even a couple sprays of Surround would have worked better up until this point, although the Surround on my nectarine tree has been very disappointing, with a lot of crescent shaped marks on fruit with a good covering of Surround.

I feel for you. Most people don't realize how difficult it is to raise a significant quantity of food.

I've sorta been through the same thing, experiencing failure with organic methods. My hat's off to Scott Smith who is still working hard to make it work in an area of real pest pressure.

I agree with oregonwoodssmoke that when growing your own fruit, you at least have control over when and what your spraying. No matter what your spray schedule, it's very likely your spraying less than what you buy in the grocery store. As an example, most homeowners don't use organophosphates.

Another example, did you know that many apples are dipped in fungicide after harvest to control storage rots?

People don't give a second thought of buying produce from the grocery store that is treated heavily with pesticides. Yet, for some reason, they refuse to treat any of their home grown fruit with pesticides. It's a disconnect to me.

As Hman has frequently pointed out, the current trend is to focus on agricultural pesticides while ignoring other toxins.

Our wives and daughters plaster their faces with toxic hydrocarbons and we don't give it a second thought, while insisting our home grown food never be sprayed with anything that doesn't occur naturally. As another example, the toxic acetone women use in their fingernail polish remover is OK, but don't spray their home grown fruit with anything but the most innocuous benign substances (i.e. milk, vegetable oil, ect.)

The truth of the matter is our bodies are made to detoxify substances, whether it be nicotine, alcohol, chocolate, or the menagerie of toxins our bodies produce naturally.

I'm not the least bit afraid of eating 1ppm of propiconizole residue on fruit compared to the caustic/carcinogenic hydrocarbon fumes I breathe when I run my weed eater/lawn mower.

Frank:

The problem you are having with plum curculio getting into the bags is very difficult for me to understand. I have PC everywhere around the orchard, and my bags stop them cold, as well as all the later insects that are perhaps not as capable at crawling around as the PC. I do two early sprays with Imidan before I start thinning and bagging.

You need to take a careful look at the way you are installing the bags. The PC, capable as they are, still cannot walk on the bag surface to get into the corner cutouts, so that leaves the area around the stem as the prime suspect.

Bag preparation is a chore, and it actually takes me longer to prepare the bags than to install them. But you should try that single cut in the middle of the zipper with a sidecutter. Wasn't it you who suggested I get a better sidecutter for my bag preparation? Well, I did, a mini-cutter that had never been used on steel, and that solved my problem. Bags cut in the middle of the zipper fit so snugly against the stem that there is no possible way the PC can enter.

I have also reconsidered use of knockoff and house-brand bags, and am buying genuine Ziplocs, made in Racine, Wisconsin. The real deal Ziplocs just have a better zipper, and you can feel that baby click home as you run your fingers across it. They never blow off, unless the apple inside chooses to poop out. Ziplocs are worth a few extra cents.

I am neither organic nor inorganic, but like the idea of minimizing pesticide use, and hate the work and expense of repeated chemical spraying. Once I get my bags on, that is it for the rest of the season, and I even leave them on for storage. The apples come out perfect, with the bonus of more than 90% reduction in sooty blotch and flyspeck.

I have thought of hiring a chimpanzee to do the bag preparation, but can't find one that is interested, even for unlimited bananas. They consider the work to be too mind-numbing and repetitive. I just finished preparing 120 Ziplocs an hour ago that will go on tomorrow. So far, I am up to 1,700, and will probably do another 1,000. Herbert in Georgia though he was crazy to have done 700, but just when you think you are crazy, somebody comes along who is even crazier.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I wonder under these circumstances (unusually high PC pressure) if a person could bag and then spray.

I'm just trying to think of something to knock the PC down to a manageable level while maintaining a goal of zero pesticides on the fruit.

Frank, if for some reason you travel through KC this summer, look me up. So far, it looks like a good peach crop and I'd be glad to give you all you can eat (as I recall you like peaches). Or if you'll pay the shipping, I'll ship some up to you (I've never done that before, and not sure how they turn out on arrival, but I'd be willing to try.)

Don't feel too bad Frank, I just finished bagging my trees. Not remembering exactly when I wanted to start, I bagged them all several weeks ago. Within hours the good old KS wind started howling and I looked out to see how the bags were doing. The bags were doing fine but 10 or so were headed down the street in front of the house! The fruit stems weren't ready to hold on to the branches yet. I hauled my butt out the door and removed them all, good thing too. Many of the bags still attached were girdling the stems, no doubt many more would have been lost had the bags not been removed.

Mental note to self, bag in late May next year instead of on the 7th!!!

Jelly-

I sprayed nothing before i bagged. I know for a fact that i had 0 PC damage that i noticed when bagging and the apples were small, but not too small (the bag would stay) and some blew off with some 40 mph winds we had, but i caught up with them and covered them back up. The wx was very warm, everything bloomed early, set fruit and that is right when the pattern changed and we went cold. PC were gone for quite some time, while the apples slowly started sizing up...and i bagged when the warm wx started coming back around. Maybe the apples just weren't big enough to start bagging?

I will say i'm proud of the plum crop on the Superior. Its holding a lot of fruit and no PC damage yet that i can see, so the Surround did a great job on that. That tree also has a very "open" structure which probably keeps PC away since they seem to like to take the fruit that sits deep within the tree (shaded).

Sweet cherries look like death, but they are turning red today and while i'm sure they are full of PC larvae, i'll probably still get to sample.

Strawberries are turning red and picked about a pound.

Fruit trees are tough and anyone who grows them deserves a lot of credit! especially those who do it organically or on low spray program. When you look at weather, pests, disease...its a lot to manage.