I'll be really interested in hearing your experience this fall after you've harvested this year's crops. I've wanted to stop using pesticides on my fruit, but I feel like I'll lose so much fruit that I'd be sorely disappointed. Last year, I was lax about spraying pesticide on my cherries and only sprayed them once, in the middle of the growing season. I regretted it. I started popping them in my mouth without looking for worms just because they *taste so darn good that way* and I couldn't resist. But then after cutting a bunch open, I found that 40% of them had little white worms, and the only way I could stand to eat them was to cut each one open, one at a time, remove the worms and put the cut cherries in a bowl in the fridge. It's just not the same as popping a fresh, whole cherry in your mouth!

Anyway, if you can develop a better track record than that without pesticides, I'd certainly be interested in following your example.

I don't have trees mature enough to produce anything quite yet. However, I've read in the Fruit forum (although they overall agree with Steve that it's pretty hard to have a good crop organically), there have been many discussions about bagging fruit. I believe you start when the fruit is about the size of a nickel, and then you take it off when most of the danger of infestation has passed. There are a bunch of different media used, ranging from paper lunch bags, ziplock bags, to those little footies that are also used as socks when people try on shoes (they aren't used, by the way). A mini-discussion is going on here:
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fruit/msg0400030418546.html?9

We'll see if this is the year I get any production. Another thing you could do, as far as informational, is subscribe to the USU IPM weekly email for fruit trees. I love seeing the pictures and following the stages of development to compare to my own trees.

Here is a link that might be useful: USU IPM

Thanks for the support. I'm pretty new to this so I could crash and burn. Maybe I can be a good counter-example. I will put a link to a site that has been a wealth of information for me below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lost Nation Orchard