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For years I had a beautiful cherry three that was wormy, but I refused to spray. However, it was very disappointing to see the fruit destroyed by worms before the cherries had a chance to ripen fully. The only option was to pick them before they were ripe and ignore the extra protein.

I tried a number of ways to keep the worms out, all to no avail. Finally, I had the idea to actually put a barrier around the cherries. The first year I tried small mesh bags around a few cherries, and it worked; those cherries were wormless. The next year I tried bagging larger branches to see if the leaves would be damaged by it, but they seemed very happy when I took the bags off to pick the cherries.

In the spring of 2005 I bought about $600 worth of netting and used over half of it to make a huge bag for my 16' diameter tree. The results were incredible; not only were all the cherries worm-free, but there was no bird damage, the leaves were beautiful and free of bugs, there were no split cherries, and only one small bit of mold where the cherries, bag and another tree touched. As an added bonus, we left the bag on and picked inside, so we didn't have to deal with mosquitoes.

I left some of the fruit on until mid-August just to see what they would do, and they got very sweet and dark. I waited till some were starting to shrivel and split them, took out the pit and dried them. I had never eaten dried cherries that good before.

In the spring of 2006 I had 9 bags produced which were used to cover other people's trees. I also covered a variety of branches on other trees in the area. We developed a way to deploy the full covers quickly, some only taking about 10 minutes. Trees which were really too large for the covers were also done but took longer to put on.

At harvest time I collected samples from all the covered trees and all the branch bags plus control samples from trees and branches which were not covered. The data was incredible.

Most of the leaves on the covered trees were beautiful and healthy when the bags were removed. However, one tree had been infected with aphids before we covered it, but when we discovered this, we caught some ladybugs and put them inside. That stopped future damage, and the ladybugs got really large.

2006 research results below include the last name of the tree's owner, the date the sample was collected, the type of net used, the number of cherries in the sample, and the number of worms per cherry in the sample. One net came open on the ground, and had 3 worms in a 50-cherry sample (.06) and one unbagged tree had no worms in the sample, but it was small, isolated, and had a yellowish cherry. That's me beside one of the covered trees.

After having a professional patent search done, I discovered that no one had ever done this before; I now have a patent pending.

For more information, email the following address or call (250) 353-2264.

	*note: This is not a clickable link so bots can't find me to send spam. You should type this address into the to: line of your message.

Since by using a cover, no poison residue develops on the cherries, and there are zero worms in them, dried cherries could be an excellent secondary product, which could lead to a whole new market being developed. This would extend the cherry season from a couple of months to the whole year. The flavour is incredible, and they're safe to eat.

This page was first created January 10, 2006 by Marilyn Roberts

Last updated May 21, 2007