Pollination, help needed?!

[ina]

I have been reading about pollinating peppers and things with a paint brush. I have never done anything like that and I understand that for some things you use the male flower (melons) and other things a brush.

How do you use the brush, just dab and dab all flowers? Small brush I guess?
Does it matter what time of day?
I also read about shaking tomato plants to aid pollination. Is the pollen from one flower supposed to fall onto another one? Could this be effective?

How does it work with strawberries? Mine have been under fine chickenwire (1cm square holes) and I've hardly seen any bees, how come there are already so many fruits?

My harvests of peppers has always been good, maybe I can get even more by helping mother nature by hand pollinating?

[ina]

[derbex]

I use a small, artists, paintbrush on my strawberries and just waggle it about the yellow bit in the middle (stop me if I get too technical :)) -works for me. It gets done either before or after work. I only do this for ones in the greenhouse the outdoor strawbs have to fend for themselves.



I have heard about shaking sweetcorn, to get the pollen to fall onto the tassels, but not tomatos. Not sure if it would work so well with flowers.

[john_miller]

It's best done in early morning, Ina, as pollen doesn't live long and the higher heat of the day will increase it's chances of reaching the ovaries. Tomatoes are self pollinating, each flower pollinating itself. However, if you look at a tomato flower you will notice that the stigma is not in contact with the anthers and is proud of the cluster of them. The style pushes through the cluster before the pollen is ripe so pollination does not occur at this time. Tomatoes rely naturally upon the wind (wind rock-they are not insect pollinated to any great degree) to transfer the pollen from the anthers to the stigma. By shaking the tomato plants you are duplicating this.
Many are not aware that bees are responsible, by some estimates, for less than 50%, or no more than 60%, of pollination. Other pollinating vectors, flies etc., will be able to get through your chicken wire easily even if bees are excluded.
Any plant can only carry a finite amount of fruit. Helping mother nature may not automatically increase your pepper yield but there is but one way for you to find out- try it!

[ina]

Thank you Derbex and John!

That was a lot of good info John, I understand this whiole pollination thing a lot better now, especially the tomato part is now totally clear to me. I never thought about flies etc. pollinating as well.
Thanks again.