Protecting Your Apples from Insects Organically with Surround and Nylon Stockings
For many years I've been frustrated by the near complete loss of my apple crop to plum curculios, codling moths and apple maggot. If you're not familiar with these insects pests download this excellent PDF from the Wisconsin extension. It is free to download and you can purchase a hard copy as well. Between the three of these little devils, I was getting only enough apples for a few pints of applesauce. I tried putting nylon stockings over the developing tiny fruit. However, the plum curculios damage the fruit before it is large enough to be able to use this technique. This year I finally got smart and I began spraying my apples since petal fall with Surround, a finely ground clay that irritates the insects and prevents them from feeding or injecting their eggs into the fruit. Here's a good article about using Surround kaolin clay. (It's probably obvious but "petal fall" is when most of the petals have fallen off the blossoms.) Don't sp...