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Growing Tomatoes

Hand pollinating tomatoes

12 years ago

Like a few other posters here, I too have been having a little trouble with fruit set. I planted 2 varieties this year, Big Mama(large roma) and Porterhouse(beefsteak). Big Mama is doing fairly well and I have clusters of fruit on nearly all 16 plants. Porterhouse does not want to seem to set fruit though. Out of 6 plants I only have 1 tomato. The weather here has been unusually hot and humid for the last 2 weeks and now has cooled down again to the upper 70s low 80s. I have brought out my paint brush in the past for help on Zucchinni and Cucumber plants and polinated from the male to female flowers, but I am unsure on how to use it on the tomatoes. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

-Jon

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Comments (4)

dciolek
12 years ago
I've been using an electric toothbrush with the brush-head removed the last week or so on about 90 plants / 20 diff varieties. This seemed to be as close to the vibration produced by a bumblebee as possible from all the recommendations I read about (and probably releases the pollen the best based on the visual feedback of seeing the little clouds of pollen drop when you touch the vibrating head to the behind the base of the flower slightly down the stem -- I wouldn't touch the yellow part).

Absent that, just a little shake, a gentle flick or anything that gives the flowerhead a little movement (rotating fans)?

The excessive heat and humidity is probably stressing certain tomatoes not built for it -- so you could be pollinating well, but still have blossoms dropping out due to stress.

Jury is out on how well its working for me -- my flowers just started coming out last week, don't seem much development of fruit yet.
archoo16
11 years ago
I have an old brush head from my sonicare tooth brush. Turn it on and touch the outer side of the tomato bloom where the petals and sepals join. In good lighting , you can actually see the pollen pouring off the flower. It cant be too humid,the pollen are stuck in clumps or too dry ( the pollen wont stick where they are supposed to). electric toothbrush works beautifully!!
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@Weirdtrev, thanks for the advice, they're outdoors. I know tomatoes have both sexes in one flower... I vibrate them to mimic the effect of a bug or bee landing on the flower and shaking the pollen loose so it can pollinate itself. What's been happening in the past, is I let nature do the work and I get a super tiny tomato harvest... lots of blooms, no maters. Growing some hybrid determinate bush tomatoes, they're at about maturity now and pushing out blooms Then growing some heirloom indeterminate tomatoes, they too are at maturity and some are pushing out flowers. Thanks!
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ninecrow - the difference here is hand pollinating. All cukes except the parthenocarpic varieties need pollinating to produce fruit so your's will too. It has nothing to do with bitterness. The issue is how that pollination is done - by hand or by nature. 99% of it is done by insects but you can choose to try hand pollination if you wish but it isn't necessary. Like rockgrower said, bitterness is water related and can also be due to leaving the fruit on the vine too long. Dave
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Hand pollinating indoor tomato plants just means to lightly shake or tap the stem with the flower. Some people use electric toothbrushes to encourage pollination. Tomatoes are self-pollinating, but they still need some help without bees or other insects when grown indoors. That's what I've read and what I did before they were placed outside. As for cuttings, I would do that before the basil flowered if I were not able to get the basil to seed successfully. I know some people do that to keep a continuous supply of basil before the basil flowers and to prevent the basil from turning bitter. In my case, I have no plans to keep the basil outside and I would like to try to collect some seeds to plant at later date. Do you keep your basil indoors? If you do, does your basil still provides viable seed without any intervention? Or do you keep your basil outdoors. I just want to confirm. Thanks.
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There's also individual variation between plants of the same variety. Genetics are not identical--just stable for the traits of the variety. The way 2 German shepherds will meet the breed standard but not be clones of one another at all. For example, I have 2 Earl of Edgecombe plants in similar sized containers right next to one another, getting fed and watered the same. One is very branchy/bushy and has twice the fruit set of the other. But it had early BER, has smaller fruits, and is slower to produce ripe fruit. The other is more tree-like in habit with a clear main stem, has fewer fruit, but average fruit size is larger, and it's ripening earlier. Both have the same foliage, though, and fruit characteristics are very similar. It's hard to draw solid conclusions from small sample sizes. You'd have to grow out a bunch of plants in identical conditions except for the variable you're testing. Or, if you wanted to do a very small sample size, you could probably take suckers of the same plant and root those and grow those to compare. But you'd have to account for the time difference/maturity difference of the suckers.
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jimm_sc
11 years ago
You may already know, but I won't make assumptions. Tomato flowers can pollinate themselves. You don't have to transfer pollen from one flowere to another. Shaking or vibrating causes the pollen to drop onto the receptors in that flower.
Jim
digdirt2
11 years ago
Agree with Jim and you also need to remember that given high heat and high humidity you can vibrate them to death with whatever you want - toothbrushes included - and it won't make a darn bit of difference because the pollen isn't viable.

Dave

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