Organic Guide To Growing Apples: Bagging Apples

Producing quality apples can be challenging, they are subject to lots of pests and diseases, but now we have discovered a low-tech way to grow high-quality fruit you won't be afraid to eat.

Developed in the 19th century, apple bagging is applied to about 30 percent of the crop, Now, fruit bagging has been used in commercial orchards to improve fruit finish on apples. But the bags also act as a barrier to protect the fruit against attack by summer insect pests and diseases. Individual fruits are bagged in the spring and remain bagged until 3 weeks before harvest. No additional pesticide sprays are needed once the bags are placed on the fruit.

The steps involved with fruit bagging include:

Selecting Apple Varieties

With several thousand apple varieties to choose from, though, you do have to narrow it down, if you are thinking about planting fruit trees of your own. An apple must be disease resistant and also taste good. Luckily, nature has produced plenty of heirloom apples that have excellent flavor, as well as good pie, sauce, and drying qualities. Among them are hundreds of disease-resistant apples to choose from.

Early Season Pest Management

Apple scab, cedar apple rust, and fire blight are early season diseases that attack the trees before apple bagging. All trees should be pruned normally and receive a thorough dormant oil spray during the late winter or early spring. Plum curculio attacks the apples before the fruit is large enough to bag. So before bagging, gardeners should apply an insecticide, such as Imidan, for control of plum curculio and codling moth at the petal fall stage and again two weeks later. Petal fall is when all of the petals have fallen off of the blossoms. These would be the last pesticide applications of the year.

Thinning

The fruit should be thinned to a single fruit per fruit cluster with approximately one fruit per six to seven inches of the limb when the fruit is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter. This will help to produce large fruit and encourage a return to bloom next year. The fruit can be thinned at the same time that the apples are bagged.

Bagging The Fruit Eliminates The Need For Sprayed Pesticides

Open the paper bag and place over the fruitlet, keep the fruitlet completely enclosed in the bag. Next, cinch the fruitlet with a paper bag in an accordion-like fashion and secured by a twist tie. Finally, rotate the twist tie at least 360 degrees around the cinched paper.

Bag Removal

Keep a bag on the branch for the duration of the growing season. It is better to remove or ripped open to get more light penetration three weeks before harvest to allow the fruits to color properly. Generally, during this late summer period, no additional sprays are needed.

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