Getting Intimate With Your Apples

I try to imagine what it would be like to depend totally on the production of our garden and trees. One would probably agonize over every sprout, be aiming the .22 at rabbits and stalking slugs and other pests as if they were terrorists.

Each piece of fruit could be important. This would be a lean year. We had nice blossoms but then it got cold and pollination was apparently weak. Hand pollinating is not yet in my repetoire. Most of our trees are four years old, just barely ready for production. But even the mature trees that were loaded last year have very few apples. Thus, each one takes on a certain importance. Now we face the spector of apple maggot and coddling moth.

With so little fruit left on the trees I decided to get serious about eating what was left. Mother Earth News had an article about wrapping each fruit to protect them from the the moth and fly.

I ordered a box of footies from these guys and tied one on each apple with a piece of string. (These footies are what they give you in a shoe store to put on to protect the shoes from your awful feet).

Mine look kind of droopy but I think they should do the job.

Then the Cloud Mountain Newsletter arrived with this interesting video and described different way to put on the footie.