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.