Has anyone tried bagging pears before? I've lost at least 90% of my apples to plum curculio this year(you're lucky in the NW, although I heard it is coming your way). I noticed some marks on a few of my asian pears. I would like to actually eat one this year. Any thoughts on bagging or should I just go with Kaolin Clay. I also noticed some black spots on the leaves of the asian pear tree, does anyone know what this is and what I can do about it?
Thank you,
Denryk, "Kaolin What?" "(you're lucky in the NW, although I heard it is coming your way)" - sounds like you should be informing us!!
I just read our Home Orchard Society's Pome News article on Bagging fruit (Pg. 61, Spring, 2005). It reads as if you can beg about anything?! Pears seem so "closely related" to apples, it sounds like a decent strategy to me.
What kind of damage does this curculio do? Is it mostly "cosmetic," or does it ruin the fruit completely? (guess I could "search" this real quick online..?) Are we going to end up like the Japanese - bagging almost everything - then selling it at $10 a piece 
? Talk about labor intensive?!
Just remember, when it gets too bad, you can do like me: grind em into juice! Pear is wonderful!
Surround WP Kaolin Clay is a refined type of clay (don't use any other type of Kaolin Clay they are phytotoxic and will kill your trees) that you spray onto your trees early with 3 coats. If it rains you spray again. The pests don't like it. It gets in their way and into their legs and mouths and they leave the area. It leaves a white residue on the apples which washes off without any problem. It also protects the apples from sunburn. You can read an article about it at http://www.herbsandapples.com. Click on The Apple Grower then click on Grow Organic. There is a small list of articles.
You can buy it at:
Surround WP Kaolin Clay can be purchased at http://www.extremelygreen.com.
Surround At Home can be purchased at http://www.gardensalive.com.
The comment I made about plum curculio coming your way is based on something that I read and I can't remember where I read it. Sorry. I remember it saying it was slowly heading your way, I believe NW. This could be completely inaccurate and irrelevant (maybe not though). Any way, Out of my 15 or so trees I was only able to bag about 100 good apples. 98% of all the other apples had the tell tale signs of plum curculio. A crescent shaped mark on the skin of the apple. They lay eggs inside. In the early apple growing stage the apple is shocked and it falls to the ground. The plum curculio after a couple of weeks then moves to the ground for about a month then the cycle begins again. At the end of the growing season plum curculio is left in the ground waiting for the following spring.
Anyways, if you don't have plum curculio I'm jealous. The Surround WP Kaolin Clay works on many other pests. I haven't used it yet because I discovered it too late. I will next year.
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