Protecting our fruit trees now, for a bountiful harvest later
When we bought our homestead, we became caretakers to several mature fruit trees, including a very prolific apple tree, an Asian pear tree, a regular pear tree, two Italian plum trees, and two green fig trees. We’ve also added two cherry trees to the property.
I love all the fruit we get to harvest in the late summer and fall. Unfortunately though, we’re in competition for the fruit with apple maggots, which like that like to burrow into the apples and pears, and birds, which consistently beat us to the ripe cherries.
Over the years we have tried several approaches to protecting against apple maggots, including sprays, traps and even putting little nylon socks on every baby apple to keep the bugs out (not fun). We finally settled on apple maggot traps as the best balance of effort vs. results.
The traps are placed on the trees a few weeks after the flower petals start to fall — which happened to be this weekend. They’re shaped like apples, and you coat them with a super-sticky glue, then attach an apple-scented attractant that draws in the bugs, which then get stuck in the glue. Applying the glue is a pain in the butt and is best done with gloves on, but as you can see from the picture of one of last year’s used traps below, they’re effective at catching the flies before they turn into worms.
Our apples and pears have had much fewer bugs since we started using these traps, which is great when canning and cider pressing season rolls around in the fall.
Meanwhile, we’re testing something new this year to keep the birds off the cherry trees: covering them with massive nets. The net weave is tight enough to keep birds and squirrels out, but big enough to let our mason bees and other pollinators in.
Getting the net on was a beast, and involved Dave on a tall ladder with a long pole on one side, and me with our longest fruit picker extended to about 25 feet on the other side, so we could drag the net over the top of the tree. We’re testing it on one tree to start, and if that goes well, we’ll consider netting the other cherry tree next year.
