Nice video, thanks for posting, Don!
Last year I did the zip lock baggies. I followed the instructions, cut off the corners for drainage etc, They ruined most of the apples and asian pears. They rotted and cracked. Especially rotted.
My trees are small. Maybe they got too much sunshine. The water inside was condensation apparently from the fruits.
I might try footies this year, especially if more experienced people think they work. Or find paper bags.
I am convinced people will become more and more innovative in this area.
I just picked up some bags from a person/company called startbagging. They are expensive but the drawstring is appealing for its ease of use. You might check out their website and form your own opinion.
I also recently (last week) heard from some engineering students who are interested in my apple bagging device that I purchased from China. One of the guys has seen with his own eyes the usefulness of such an idea in Asia when he was there. I might add that a year ago I loaned Lee Reich a copy of this apple device and he and a friend looked at it and provided some useful feedback. It was also quite a hit a couple years ago when I showed it informally to a couple people at a HOS forum held in conjunction with NAFEX there at that McMenammin's hotel (sp?) So, I know it has promise and maybe China will be the first country to really come out with a commercially viable product because China bags their apples.
I also (three years ago) heard of some men on the fruit section of the gardenweb.com forum website who wanted to make foot sox that would close more easily and completely and were going to work together to come up with a good product. I can envision where someday there will be foot sox impregnated with a fungicide that will increase scab resistance.
This whole idea of bagging fruit may become less and less of a remote idea.....and more and more professionalized, in my opinion.
A lot of this movement has its origin of course with Ted Swenson and the paper baggers with HOS.
RE: plastic baggies - I have found that the baggies will work even if the bottoms are slit all the way across. I was getting too much condensation and, in the case of Asian Pears, I needed it to me more open as they got larger. The bottoms of the bags stick together initially and then open up as they get larger. I have had some problems with apples getting sunburnt in really hot weather so I try to figure out which ones will be affected and I have added a footie as well to protect them. (I have found footies work best for peaches though I have used two/peach. Unfortunately, this year I won't have many peaches since the tree is too diseased.)
RE: "startbagging" bags - the idea looks similar to my idea of my raspberry bags to keep out SWD though they have a fancier drawstring system and I need to have access to the other end to pick berries. They don't say what the material is but it looks similar to Reemay material. I used No-see-um netting though I did make some bags out of Reemay one year when I needed more bags fast. The Reemay material was definitely more fragile than the netting though this past year some of my netting bags started to rip. It seemed like last year the pressure from SWD was not too bad b/c of the hotter/drier weather, but I still found evidence of them at some point.
redberry
Hey Don,
Great to hear from you again. That was a great video. I am all for hearing about innovations to make fruit more protected, by less toxic and easier, cheaper methods. I am with redberry in that I always slice off the entire bottom of the ziploc. I think it does get too rotten, hot, and waterlogged if not. This works pretty well for me. I also use fruit sox, yes, Ted Swensen's idea. He still sells them at Prima Consulting. These are fruit sox soaked in kaolin clay, which are much more effective. I wrote an article about this many years ago in the Pome News. These two methods work well for me.
John S
PDX OR
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
1 Guest(s)