What you describe sounds a whole lot like a tea ball.

You have a few interesting ideas. I am currently placing red fine mesh melon bags over my apples, they have have ties on them. They are great. They don't stop fly-speck or sooty smudge, but you can spray through them, and they dry thoroughly after a rain. No birds yet, thank goodness! We need to breed birds that love moths and insects and hate fruit!

Here's another novelty idea for pears.....a youtube on growing pears in a bottle. (You might have to copy link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOz0HE5Uygk

In the northwest U.S., pears don't get infested with spotted wing drosophilia flies.....they don't get infested with apple maggot flies....they SOMETIMES get infested with codling moth, but only later in the season when the pear skin starts to soften.....so I guess at that point you could put a foot sock over the opening of any bottle you put over a pear....

okay, you were talking about apples....but I thought I'd do this bit of whimsy about pears.

Yes, what Northwood is describing is basically what I described, perhaps not as clearly, in the previous thread. We may make a plastic lip, with a metal spring, to lighten the device.

Veggie-Forms here:

Here is a link that might be useful: Veggie-Forms

Over in the tropical fruits forum "bags" made of window screen are all the rage for protecting mangos. They can be simple to complex, aluminum or plastic, sewn or stapled, drawstring or clipped.

I remember vividly on a trip through a rural area of China some years back we passed an apple orchard. Every single apple was in a bag (looked like a paper sack from our distance).

Paper sandwich bags were used before people caught on to ziplocks - they were stapled around the stem.

Where is the tropical fruits forum? I could not find it.

Tropical fruits forum:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/tropicalfruits/

Mrs g47 build bluebird houses and if you are in their range they will come. also condos for martens. If you do that you have to stop the insecticide spray. You can't have it both ways. I had a bluebird hit my glass door a while back and injure a wing. I put it in a box in my office no top on the box with water and burger, and left the window open. I came home 3 weeks later and the bird was gone. The next spring I was sitting at the computer and 2 bluebirds landed on the window sill. I got burger out of the fridge and they ate some and left. I red about houses and put one in my no spray garden of cukes and they moved in. He came back for 3 more years and got so bold as to fly in and sit on my desk and chirp till I got him his treat. Now they still come back but none will come inside and demand . I never seem to have a bug problem in that garden. I am not going to bet the farm on bluebirds, martens, and bats but if I were organic I would try to add it to my war chest.

I have had bluebirds nesting in my garden several years now. I don't spray anything but my irises, since iris borers live inside the leaves where bluebirds wouldn't be able to get at them. The adult bluebirds would dive-bomb me if I worked too close to their nests. I love to hear them singing, so I will bag or risk having a little insect damage from not spraying to be able to have the bluebirds. Also had some wrens nesting near an apple tree that scolded me every time I walked by. Other frequent birds were goldfinches, chickadees, pileated, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, catbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, robins and cardinals. For some reason, the birds left my strawberries alone, but I keep the blueberries under chicken wire. Northwoodswis

I checked out what a tea ball was, and it is just what I had envisioned inventing! All it would need is a slot for the stem. The question would be if the moths would be able to lay their eggs if part of the apple were touching the screen. If so, some further modification with some sort of bumper inside to keep the screen away from the fruit surface might be needed. The tea ball I saw was $20, but our daughter says the grocery store sells them for $5 each. The main problem is that the tea ball isn't large enough for most apples, and of course, the price. But the idea is worth pursuing, I would think. Mass production might bring the price down. This would be for backyard organic gardeners with only a tree or two who don't care to expose their fruit to possible contamination from the plastic in the ziplocks. It would also deter the squirrels, wasps, and birds. The tea balls already marketed would probably work for small plums, if someone were to file a slot for the stem. Someone with high squirrel and bird predation should try experimenting and report what happens on Gardenweb. With local, non-organic honeycrisp apples selling for $3.49 a pound at the supermarket nearby, spending money on insect control to grow a perfect apple becomes less painful. Northwoodswis

I usually bag at least 400 apples. Even at $5, that's getting a lot more costly than ziplocks.

As I said, hopefully mass production would bring the price down considerably. I also bag about 600 apples a year. Otherwise, this would be a product for the purist, who only wants a little perfect fruit.
Northwoodswis

Similar to a tea ball, which I use every day in the office, but in a tea ball the lip goes around the equator, for an apple bag we can make a smaller, plastic lip. Also in a tea ball the spring is in the handle, in the bag the spring would have to be in the lip.

How about a ziplock type bag made of appropriate nylon mesh? Mind that any metal will reduce light to the fruit considerably, and will also get pretty heavy. But nylon is fairly light, lets more light through, and should be good for several seasons.

Of course it would lie flat until the fruit filled it, unless one could find a straightforward way to squinch the flat seams to the center and therefore puff up the bag- why am I thinking of microwave popcorn here ... ?

:-)M