Question about 'helping' the pollinators

[Dace]

I read on another post (and several others in the past) about helping along pollination by using a small paint brush eraser etc....so I was out in my garden determined that I will have more than 3 tomatoes of my darned Brandywine before the season is up. I took a small paintbrush and delicately fluffed it around all of the flowers.

Then I went to move on to anther tomato plant and thought about cross pollination...I can't use the same paintbrush on a different variety can I?
Sorry, I know know much about cross pollination and I don't want to mess up!

 

[OaklandCityFarmer]

I would rinse, or shake or somehow clean up the brush in between plants. That would cause cross pollination.

Just FYI, for most purposes, hand pollination of tomatoes is rarely needed even in the most sterile of situations (greenhouse applications, etc). Tomatoes not setting fruit is much more likely to be a conditional issue rather than a lack of pollination one. Most of the time (and I've been growing tomatoes for a LONG time and hundreds of varieties) a good shake of the plant will help pollinate them. Keeping them well watered and helping decrease high temps with some light shade or increase low temps with cold frames, mulches, etc will usually help much more than hand pollinating. If conditional situations are the biggest problems then even if you do hand pollinate the plant may just drop the fruit. Hopefully not the case.

Good luck!

 

[patandchickens]

If your weather is hot, can you shade the plants or at least their soil, at least from afternoon sun? If you can cool them down some, that may help. (From your location I am going to guess that cold nights are probably not teh problem, lol) If these are in containers, move them somewhere cooler too.

If you still want to hand-pollinate, you only need to worry about accidental crosspollination of tomatoes if you were going to save the seed. (unlike with peppers, where pollination from hot peppers can mess up the fruits of sweet varieties and vice versa). If saving seed *is* an issue, you can always choose a coupla fruits to save seed from that you KNOW weren't crossed, e.g. ones that set naturally.

Good luck,

Pat, having eaten a whopping total of 3 whole tomatoes (Early Girl) thus far in this very cool cool summer, sigh, but with a couple Black Russians getting nearly ripe. No color yet in any of the Marmandes or cherry tomatoes. Lots are *setting*, they're just not ripening anytime soon.

 

[Dace]

Thanks for the input and clarification.

So maybe you can give my some advice and help me figure out what is going on. My tomatoes that I planted in April are not thriving (they are big, but bare on the bottom 2/3 of the plants.) It is probably that the compost I brought home for my raised bed was more of a wood mulch and was really lacking in some key nutrients. I did soil testing and side dressed around the plants to help compensate for that was lacking.

My Early Girls, Romas & Brandywines have produced very little fruit. I again (about 6 weeks later) top-dressed adding in organic veggie fert (Dr Earth), bone meal, a little gypsum, chicken manure (store bought) and compost. This has spurred on more new growth and more flowers but a lot of the flowers seem to just die off. My Brandywine has produced two ripe fruit and one is green on the vine...although there are four or five clusters of flowers.

In the same bed, but planted later after thoroughly amending to soil, are 3 other tomato varieties which are producing just fine. I also have 5 assorted toms in pots all of which are setting fruit.

Seems to me that the soil that my Brandywine is in is the cause of the problem....agreed? Anything else I can do? Maybe an all purpose liquid fert? I have some 30/30/30.

 

[SewingDiva]

This may be a little off-topic, but I wanted to mention we managed to attract a lot of beneficial insects this year, both pollinators and beneficial predators like wasps, and one thing I found is that they seem to prefer certain types of flower structures.

Plants with tall flower spikes such as Salvia, Anise Hyssop, Veronica and the basils seem to provide pretty good "poles" for insects. They can grasp the spikes really easily, and I saw them spend several minutes crawling on each when they were in bloom because the flowers are also small and numerous.

The other structure they really like are broad and flat flower heads such what you see on fennel or dill, which have many small flowers over a large flat area. These plants give insects good "landing pads" and again they would spend several minutes going from one tiny flower to another.

Now the zinnias, pretty as they are with those giant single flowers, were pretty much ignored by our pollinators.

We also planted flowers among the veggies, and our pollinators would just hop from veggie flowers to ornamental flowers all day long.

~Phyllis

 

[silkiechicken]

If it's just a few plants, could be the local soil or the variety. I try not to fertilize beens and tomatoes too much during the season, as I would end up with lots of leaves and no fruit. I fertilize just once in the fall. Tomatoes are usually self pollinating so tapping at the flower usually is just fine.

 

[RedClayGardener]

(unlike with peppers, where pollination from hot peppers can mess up the fruits of sweet varieties and vice versa).

Pat and Chickens- I am curious about what you said about peppers cross pollinating. What are some of those problems? How far apart should you plant your hot peppers and sweet peppers? I have mine all growing together. The hot peppers have taken off but the sweets are taking their time so I haven't tried them yet. I'd be interested to hear anymore information you have to give.

Thanks!