Osage Oranges

The fruit of the Osage Orange tree is great for repelling all insects and spiders. However, if you pick the fruit before the frost knocks it from the tree, it will rot and draw fruit flies. The way I do it is this; when the weather report is for a hard frost over night I clean up all the fruit under the trees. The next day after the frost, everything under the trees is good to use.  If we can't clean up under the tree before a frost, we set the fruit on newspaper in the basement and watch it for a week or so to see which ones develop the tale tail cottony moss type fungi.  Once you have decided that the fruit you have is good, you will need to look at the fruit and decide how many you need to put in each room and the basement. If they are the size of a baseball, you will need one in each of the four corners of the room, for a 9'X12' room.  If they are the size of a grapefruit, two will do, one in each apposing corner of the 9'X12' room. Of course larger rooms need more and smaller rooms less.    Always put the fruit into something so as not to stain the carpet etc.

Now as the fruits decay they will look bad and you will think they are starting to rot.  However, if you don’t see a white, gray or cream colored cottony substance growing on the fruit, they are okay. What happens is, as they deteriorate they give off an essence that very faintly smells like citrus. This is what repels the crawly critters. As long as you don’t see the cotton fungus, everything is going well.  In the spring the fruit will be hard and very light, having lost it weight through out the process.

To be sure you are actually seeing a cottony fuz, feel it, if it’s smooth it’s just a spot. You will see a variety of different colored spots on the fruit as it decays, don’t worry about this, it’s normal. If you check your fruit every couple of day for the first three weeks and find everything is good, they will be okay until next May.