I checked out what a tea ball was, and it is just what I had envisioned inventing! All it would need is a slot for the stem. The question would be if the moths would be able to lay their eggs if part of the apple were touching the screen. If so, some further modification with some sort of bumper inside to keep the screen away from the fruit surface might be needed. The tea ball I saw was $20, but our daughter says the grocery store sells them for $5 each. The main problem is that the tea ball isn't large enough for most apples, and of course, the price. But the idea is worth pursuing, I would think. Mass production might bring the price down. This would be for backyard organic gardeners with only a tree or two who don't care to expose their fruit to possible contamination from the plastic in the ziplocks. It would also deter the squirrels, wasps, and birds. The tea balls already marketed would probably work for small plums, if someone were to file a slot for the stem. Someone with high squirrel and bird predation should try experimenting and report what happens on Gardenweb. With local, non-organic honeycrisp apples selling for $3.49 a pound at the supermarket nearby, spending money on insect control to grow a perfect apple becomes less painful. Northwoodswis

Thanks, Newbie, The experiment is over. I released 11 healthy Monarchs. The last 4 eclosed today. I'll do this again, but with bigger bags. I'll limit it to Monarchs, though. They seem to be perfect for Paper Bag Raising. Tdogmom, in one of the earlier posts, I proposed that you could add some kind of window if you felt you needed to constantly see them. I'm not for sure what I would make it out of, but tulle would work. I got to where I could look through the bags, held up to the light, and tell where the cats or chrysalides were. After interrupting the one that was pupating, I made sure I didn't fold the bag down quite as far. I also learned that when the food was gone, the cats crawled up the sides of the bag. Frass was so easy to clean out. I just dumped it out as it was very dry. I think you would want to put in caterpillars that had all hatched at approximately the same time. I put in caterpillars that I found on the plants and sorted them in the bags by size. That worked out pretty well. Success rate compares favorably with container raised cats. As I have raised over a 1000 Monarch cats, I'm not as inclined to need to see them. So, this fall when I am collecting 50 or more eggs a day, I'll probably use grocery bags and sandwich bags, as well as containers, to rear the masses! ; ) Sandy

Timmy, You know your stuff! I used to grow tomatoes for a number of restaurants. I used to use Calcium Nitrate on my orchard but somehow never put any in the tomato patch. That will change. I sucker my larger indeterminates to a double leader, smaller plants to triple or even 4 leaders for some plums and cherries. A typical tomato patch for me would be rows at 34 to 36" apart and plants spaced at 28 to 30" in the rows. Except on semi-determinates or otherwise smaller plants (I do not grow determinates very often) my stakes are cut 7 ft long and typically extend up from the soil 5.5 ft. or a little more. Suggest you go to http://www.internettomatoes.net/larry2.htm and click around a bit. In 1999 I was doing things commercially while now I just piddle around with maybe 50 plants. By the way those big bicolor yellow tomatoes are Burracker's Favorite, and the seed came from Chuck Wyatt. Very disappointing, but my saved seed somehow was crossed and never amounted to a piddly after that year!

I attended the same stamp convention on Saturday!!! I fell in love with the Iris Folded cards too, but didn't want to spend $9.00 for the pattern. I took some pix of some of the cards and I been playing around with designs of my own. The pattern is pretty much the same as a "Log Cabin" pattern used to create a fabric square for a real quilt---just way smaller. If I can't get mine to look as nice as the ones that I saw on Saturday, I may have to order the templates. The link to the company is: http://www.designsbydreamer.com/gallery/gallery1/index.html. -shari