I've got so many apples now I can't cover them all.
However, I find that Sturmer is a great keeper and a very good apple. Yet it is quite susceptible to both codling moth and apple maggot.
To prepare the fruit sox, I self doused the maggot barriers in a liquid clay solution. I figured i didn't need to buy something so readily available near my house.
Sometimes, when I get ready to put the fruit sox on, I notice a little dot on there. I figure it is the oviposited (?) egg of the codling moth, so I scrape it off with my finger. Most of the time,
it works. The apple looks bad, and I couldn't sell it, but I don't sell fruit. I eat it.
Most of the time I don't put fruit sox on anything else because I'm too busy. Or too lazy?
JOhn S
PDX OR
Okay. So you 'self doused the maggot barriers in a liquid clay solution', and (maggot barriers) meaning foot sox of course.
Instead of clay particles does anybody think leaves of stinging nettles in there would work?
After sleeping on that comment of mine I now think the nettles stings are aimed at deer. Then using a potent tabacco plant that carry lots of nicotine in leafy sections would work better? Pingo farms at farmers markets at the Alaska state fair is where I got seeds of more potent strains of tabacco for the purpose of repelling insects by (if you hadn't figured) interspacing live plants of these in vegetable gardens (eg. pingo gardens). If that ends up working then mint leaves (without nicotine) probably would work too.
With clay, it's a textural thing. The fruit sox have a dusty clay through them, which insects hate like diotomaceous earth. I think it gets into their exoskeletons.
If I were to try to use stinging nettle, I would probably make a tea with a high speed blender and then soak the sox in it.
I don't think it would work better than clay, but who knows, until someone tries it.
John S
PDX OR
Larry: Maybe it's possible to interfere with these openings in high smog such as growing maggot free apples some day in big cities?
College lesson via Collegedunia.com
I hope it never comes to that but possibly we are already there here in PDX for our pollinators. 
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
1 Guest(s)