Keeping apples worm-free tedious, but worth it

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, June 7, 2008

Bunkey has heard about bagging apples from his neighbor, George, so often he is ready to strangle the man. He sees no sense in spending a morning putting baggies on his apples. After all, his dad and grandpa never did anything as weird at that, and they had lots of apples.

Bunkey had forgotten that Dad and Grandpa only got apples every other year, and many of them had worms in them making them, at the very least, unpleasant to bite into.

So what is with this bagging deal?

First of all, you need to know a little bit about how an apple grows on a tree. Each spur has space for five apples to form on it. If all those spaces are full, the apple has no place to start next year's crop in late August.

So, the first thing an apple grower needs to do is thin the crop.

Pull off all but one or two of the apples about the 4th of July.

Get the discards out of the yard as any apples left on the soil are a feeding ground for next years crop of apple maggots. They spend the winter as pupae in the soil starting in early July.

The flies begin to emerge, most commonly after a rainfall of half inch or more. For the first two weeks, they just fly from tree to tree feeding on moisture, and then comes the damage.

They start laying eggs in the apples on the tree.

After a week, the eggs hatch into legless white maggots that tunnel through your apples as they feed.

When the mature apples drop from the tree, the maggots move back into the soil to start the cycle all over.

To prevent the flies from laying eggs in your apples, you must either spray your trees or put a barrier between the apple and the fly.

A plastic baggie is an ideal barrier. Simply put a zip-lock bag on each remaining apple, cut the two bottom corners off for drainage and leave the baggie on until you are ready to harvest your crop.

No fly can penetrate the plastic and your apples are in a mini greenhouse for the summer.

It takes very little time to bag 100 apples. Most people don't eat all the fruit their tree produces anyhow. Just be sure you pick up and remove any fallen apples.

If your neighbor is lazy and leaves his apples on the ground, his soil will be a breeding ground for apple maggots for the whole neighborhood.

If you have horse-crazy kids in the neighborhood, suggest to them that horses love apples and the neighbor has a lot of them just lying around.

If you would rather go the chemical route, don't feed any of your apples to me.

Eat too many chemicals and not only will you glow in the dark, you won't have to be embalmed when the time comes. You are all ready half-way there.