Well just a quick note on the results of bagging some of the fruit at the gardens this year.  The abnormally wet weather played a great part in this years crop and so it was hard to fully judge, but it seems it is a good path to take for protecting at least some selected fruit in the future.

We got some successful results for some trees and fruit. It seemed to work well for many of the fruit trees in stopping animals, birds and insects from attacking and destroying the fruit in many cases. Specifically a lot of the heritage apples survived well and grew to a fully ripe state with minimal damage despite the rest of the fruit trees having been stripped of fruit by birds etc. One example being this ‘Graveston Fanny’ (R10) apple that was picked this week still intact in a paper bag.

• The mesh and fabric type bags seemed to last better on the tree in exposed spaces
• Paper bags lasted better if tightly tied and more carefully wrapped around the fruit and branch or fruiting spur and angled with the drainage hole pointing down
• We could improve results by being more selective about which fruit should be bagged next year
• Full branch bagging is more desirable for fruit like the plums
• Cherrys need to be bagged earlier in the season
• Bags probably need to be monitored more regularly for damage and ripeness as many matured at different times

Any further comments or observations about this?

I know Jed took some documentary photos of quite a few of the fruits that survived over the harvesting period.

And yes I ate that apple – it was a good one…