I believe in your climate you can remove the bags now anyway. I finished spraying more than 2 weeks ago and will not need any future applications to get apples on scores of home and estate orchards throughout NY and CT- unless something unprecedented comes up.

Too bad about those apples, hope most of your crop is still intact. Rain was not problem for apples not in plastic in our region. Lost the cherry crop, though, and I'm seeing some isolated brown rot on stone fruit that wouldn't be their in a more normal season (it such a thing exists).

I'm seeing a million leaf issues with my apple trees... I just started pruning the heck out of them... Still the apples look great (the ones the PC didn't hammer). Some of mine are the size of a half dollar at this point. Really need to keep my apples better maintained. Not sure what you can do about cracked apples...just hope that this is a one time event.

I should have mentioned that the reason I brought up all the orchards I spray was to assure you that pest pressure is probably over for apples in your area and that's why removing the bags is pretty safe.

The total percent lost wasn't bad, as the trees on M27 rootstocks weren't carrying that many fruit. Looking at my bag counts, the 4 largest trees (all 3rd leaf) have 2/3 of the 250 bagged apples (William's Pride, Goldrush, Priscilla, and Sweet 16). None of those 4 had a single cracked apple. The largest fruit at the moment are the William's Pride and Liberty, which are both just over 1 3/8" (close to the size of yours, Frank). I've attached a picture of a William's Pride, which as you can see still has some trapped water.

Leave's haven't been too much of a problem, though early on I found (and smushed) a lot of the little worms which were eating leaves (leafrollers?). A few of them (I think it was them) also ate big holes into the tiny apples.

The only problem from the cracking is that I may need to wait a year to try those 3 apples, as at least 2 of the trees are down to 1 good apple (4-5 total, after starting with ~16). But, I'm still pretty excited to taste all the other apples. Last year I had 3 kinds, while this year I'm hoping for more than a dozen.

Thanks Harvestman. Do you think your spray schedule works because your early spray pushes down the populations, freeing you from 2nd/3rd generations? Or is it just that most of the pressure is from PC, which doesn't usually have a 2nd generation? Based on the Cornell site, I figured I would still need to fend off Codling Moth, Apple Maggot, and Oriental Fruit Moth.

Local data is needed wrt to pest pressure. Here in Northern IL, according to the state extension service, codling moth pressure is just beginning.

Yes, while Cornell is in the same part of the country, Harvestman is definitely local, as I'm in southern Fairfield county. In fact, I'm probably pretty close to some of those estates he maintains (though my house/yard is much more ordinary).

Hman is certainly a source I'd trust.

Ltilton, sorry for any confusion- I definitely trust Harvestman's advice as he's not only local, but one of the most experienced forum members. While we're in the same area, the trees aren't necessarily in the same situation, as I haven't sprayed at all. Since this could impact the results (reduced population, residual effectiveness, etc), I wanted to see if Harvestman had an opinion about whether that would matter.

Bob, I started handling the spraying of orchards as part of my business about 20 years ago. At first Cornell had me terrified about how many sprays would be necessary to get sound fruit but at U Mass a man named Prokopy was experimenting with a low spray approach to producing apples and suggested that adequate control might be achieved with two applications of Phosmet (Imidan).

At first I thought multiple generations of PC would do me in or later invasions of apple fly maggot or coddling moth.

I've yet to have an issue with AFM and coddling moth doesn't usually ruin very much fruit at sites I manage- there are varieties that make an exception to this..

I've come to the conclusion that larger stands of apples- a commercial orchard- functions like a beacon bringing in pests from a wider area but all I have is a theory. The important thing is that what I've been doing has worked.

As far as your excellent question, and just the kind of thing that would keep me up at night, I don't know. You will have to risk at least some fruit to find out. The fact that you thought of it indicates that you will puzzle the issue out and develop you own methods.

I know that protecting fruit is a lot easier when you have a tree full of it and not just a few fruit. My beacon theory doesn't apply here- ;you do need to offer a few fruit for sacrifice and a handful of fruit usually seems to get ruined, even if you only have a handful on the tree- at least with apples.

Thanks Harvestman. I'll strip the bags off a portion of the 4 main trees. They've got enough apples that a few lost won't make a big difference. In a way, it may help protect some apples, as last year I had some sun-scald of bagged apples (even Goldrush, which seems pretty tough). I didn't lose too many, but some of the apples with good southern exposure got zapped. So the bags really trade one risk for another.

I think Goldrush is also more insect resistant than most. Maybe expose something earlier and softer if you can, as such apples seem more attractive to insects. I often harvest some sound Goldrush from unsprayed trees.