Just a "cutesy" title....basically there is no ugly....we can all be grateful for Ted Swenson's continued work with this and for the HOS patrons and Seattle Tree Fruit people.
The Bad: I apologize for having sounded the alarm too early this year on the codling moth....the season so far this year has "faked" us out...we all thought things would be early but such has not happened.....and all the bugs seem delayed instead. My worry is this: early application of the foot sox with kaolin clay (which I have been doing myself) could find the kaolin washed off by the time the 2nd generation of codling moths come....but hey, I have been way wrong so far....just a worry....I do NOT know one way or the other.
The Good: I just found a new use for "used" foot sox from last year.....they can tie up tomato plants !! Yesterday in Fred Meyer I came across this product
http://www.lusterleaf.com/rapiclipTreeT ... s/829.html
Essentially, these 8 ties sell for $3 and are nothing more than foot sox dyed green.....I kid you not.....and they charge 37.5 cents a piece for them.
Rit-Dye, also purchaseable at Fred Meyer, makes an "apple green" dye that works very well on foot sox. You will NOT succeed in getting Rit-Dye to endorse this as food grade, but you know Rit-Dye is used for easter egg coloring.....so you can figure it out for yourself just how harmless this dye is if you choose to dye your own footies green.....in my amateur opinion and all.
And the reason that green footies are better than brown footies is........???
An excellent idea to use them as ties. They are soft and stretchy and save the effort of cutting up old pantie hose. Plus, I love to recycle and get multiple use out of anything before I throw it away.
Surround can be sprayed, so if your Surround washes off your footies, you can always spray the tree and that will re-coat the footies.
Dying the sox green is sometimes acceptable if the footies are in public spaces and you don't want them to be seen in quite so noticeable a fashion.
Re-applying Surround could indeed be a good idea in some cases where rain has been unseasonably high lately.
Video made last Saturday: Please forgive the audio
This year, I am applying foot sox at different times and at different places in Seattle public locations....I am observing the effects of super-strong foot sox, regular foot sox, and "Surround" treated foot sox in both high codling moth populations and low codling moth populations and applied at different times at these Seattle locations and hope to have a report for anyone interested later in the year to see what works and what doesn't work.
I also am using green paper sacks that are about 5 inches by 7 inches or so, purchased from U-line......I know paper sacks will keep out both the codling moth and the apple maggot fly but I prefer the small weight of the footies if we can make them to work. 
This is all labor intensive and I would like to hear successs stories from those who use Surround, neem oil, or Spinosad directly on their backyard trees.
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