What’s eating your tree fruit?

  • Debra Smith
  • Monday, October 8, 2007 11:20am
  • Local News

If your apples are an inedible, mushy brown mess the problem is probably apple maggots.

Apple maggots hang out in the ground through the winter and then emerge as flies beginning midsummer. They lay eggs in the flesh of apples, the eggs hatch into maggots, and the maggots eat their way through the fruit. It’s a serious, relatively recent problem in the Northwest, and there aren’t many effective ways of dealing with the problem.

One method that is effective: apple maggot barriers. It’s a little sack made of nylon that slips over the fruit just like a sock. An Oregon grower got the idea after watching his girlfriend pull on her nylon footies. These won’t do you any good this fall. But next spring you can slip the footies over the fruit. Home fruit growers report nearly 100 percent success using the footies, also called maggot barriers.

The maggot barriers are just becoming commercially available so you may have to search. Rain Tree Nursery sells 300 for $19.95, and probably others do too.

One more thing: Sanitation is crucial for stopping the spread of apple maggot. Pick up infected fruit pronto and dispose of it in the garbage, not the compost bin.

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