Problems with Apple Maggots in your apples or pears?

Amazingly, “footies” wrapped around the young fruit, and left on while they develop into full sized fruit, helps reduce damage to apples and pears!

One of our club members heard about this method and tried it and it works great! She put over 200 footies on one apple tree that she’d had apple maggot problems with in the past.   There was no damage to apples wrapped inside footies, except some that had holes pecked by birds!

In addition to cleaning up and disposing (don’t compost!) fallen apples or pears every fall, apple traps and other methods, “footies” appear to be effective for Apple Maggots in your home garden.

Here’s a photo of some of the apples that had footies on them (green ones on the second shelf) with three of the un-footie-wrapped apples on the shelf below.

Applause to this clever discovery!

Link to a story from the Seattle PI newspaper from May 2007 that talks about the discovery and a company formed around this IDEA:  https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/homegarden/article/Good-Enough-to-Eat-Sock-it-to-apple-maggots-1236235.php

[Photo: BR]