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Dear Mr. Swensen,

Four years ago my Golden Delicious tree was attached by codling moth. Not knowing anything about this pest I sprayed my tree every month in hopes that this would take care of the problem. During the next 3 years I learned a lot (mainly from the internet) about the moth, while watching my heavily bearing tree become a retirement home for thousands of them, my apples falling to the ground by they time they were around 2” in diameter. I tried every remedy suggested on the internet, including a few chants and even, as suggested by one ‘expert’, asking them to leave. Consequently by the time I read your article I laughed – who ever would bother to put panty hose on every apple on the tree. I thought ok, this is probably a complete waste of time and money but I’ll give it a try and after that consider having the tree cut down and removed.

So, I ordered 600, and spent about an hour a day for 6 days hoping that my neighbors wouldn’t notice what I was doing. Even if they did I hoped they would be too polite to ask. I covered 2/3 of the fruit and left the top for the birds. Then I waited, every week or so checking the growing fruit and not finding any entry holes. Then a few weeks later I found one (I knew this wouldn’t work) but also found that I had not tied the sock securely around the stem. During the season I found about 20 infested apples.

So, that left me with 580 perfect apples! I couldn’t believe how simple the solution was. Thank you so much for your wonderful invention! You saved my tree!

I still have one request – I live in a very windy area. Could you come up with a way of tying the sock containing the fruitlet to the branch to prevent the fruit from being blown off the tree and bruised when hitting the ground?

C.C.
Fairfield, CA
(Used by permission)

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