Protect fruit from apple maggots and codling moths

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By Vern Nelson, Special to The Oregonian

Though I grow 41 varieties of apples, some years I have very few apples to harvest. It is not because of poor fruit set but because apple maggot flies destroy most of them.
At last there is an effective way to prevent apple maggot damage. I call it the apple sock.
My friend Ted Swensen puts "footies," those stretchy little nylon socks you find in shoe stores for trying on shoes, over young apples as a barrier to apple maggots and codling moths.
HOW TO USE THEM: Slide a footie over one unblemished apple per cluster (choose an apple with a thick stem) about mid-May this year, while thinning fruit, before codling moths lay eggs. Pick off the rest of the cluster.

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