For home gardeners and backyard farmers, one of the biggest frustrations is seeing your lovingly grown fruits and vegetables destroyed by invasive beetles, caterpillars, and other pesky critters. No matter how careful you are, preventing these tiny pests from ruining your harvest can seem impossible.

Insecticides and pesticides can help, but many gardeners prefer avoiding the cost, effort and potential risks of chemical pest control methods.

So, what's the solution? Surprisingly, a simple ziplock bag could be the pest control trick you've been looking for!

Here's how it works: by encasing developing fruits in ziplock bags, you create a protective physical barrier that prevents moths, beetles, and other insects from accessing and laying eggs in your crops.

At the same time, the thin plastic allows sunlight to reach the fruit so they can grow unimpeded. It's an ingeniously simple technique that keeps pests away without chemicals.

Ziplock bags can be utilised as an effective and eco-friendly way of controlling pests in fruit trees without using harmful chemicals. Credit: The Quarter Acre Homestead/Youtube

The benefits of bagging fruits and vegetables are numerous:

• Chemical-free pest control
• Reusable bags reduce waste and cost
• Allows sunlight and airflow for healthy growth
• Prevents infestations of common pests like codling moths, apple maggots, cucumber beetles, and tomato hornworms.
• Avoids damage from insects chewing through leaves and laying eggs

Professional fruit growers have used this technique for years, but backyard gardeners are discovering its usefulness, too.

Jan Rhodes at The Backyard Gardener tested bags on her apple trees and found they greatly reduced but did not completely prevent insect damage.

‘Not all bagged apples escaped coddling moth,’ Jan said.

Bagging fruits is an easy and straightforward process. It is recommended to bag when the fruit is small. For apple trees, it is advised to thin them out once the fruit is at least 1 ½ inch in diameter. Thinning refers to the removal of all but one fruit from a cluster.

Afterwards, place the fruits inside the bag and secure the seal around the branch.

The few pest-damaged apples may have been due to small gaps in the bag closure. They said properly sealing the bags is critical.

If you don’t have a ziplock bag, a regular plastic bag and a twist-tie would do as it provides a tight seal.

Remove bags about three weeks before harvest so the fruit can ripen fully and develop colour. This technique works best for apples, pears, tomatoes, cucumbers, and other fruits prone to insect pests.

It’s also important to always remove any damaged or infested fruits immediately to prevent spreading.

As Jan said, ‘I found it to be worth the time and effort, and will definitely employ bagging next season.’

However, Jan mentioned looking into more sustainable options next time.

‘I do, however, intend to find biodegradable bags for the process,’ they added.

A farmer shared his experience with bagging fruits in ziplock bags here:

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Key Takeaways

• It's suggested that plastic ziplock bags can be used as a gardening technique to protect fruits from bugs and pests.
  
• The bags create a physical barrier that keeps pests away from the fruit, and they can also be used as a chemical-free pest control option.
  
• This pest control method is popular among commercial growers and is typically used for growing apples, pears and tomatoes.
  
• The process involves bagging the fruit when small and removing the bags about three weeks before harvesting so the fruit can develop its colour.
  

While not 100% foolproof, ziplock bags provide very effective organic pest control. For a simple, reusable method that keeps your crops protected while avoiding chemicals, try this clever technique.

How do you protect your crops from pests, members? Do you know of tried-and-tested methods other green thumbed SDC members could use? Let us know in the comments below!

 

[Lolali]

Terrible idea, the fruit will cook in the sun of course.
Mould & rot too. I use onion or any knitted sort of bag, plastic too.