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Hand-pollinating, step by step

Two flowers, two different plants, one night. The work itself takes about a minute a flower — the rest is timing, labelling, and two weeks of waiting to find out whether it took.

8 min read8 sections

The previous guide gives you the hard constraint: two genetically different plants, both in flower, on the same night. Everything below assumes you have that — or that you have in the freezer from the last time you did.

It is worth doing even if you are not chasing a particular . One grower with plenty of bees on site gets almost no fruit without stepping in; the insects visit and the fruit still does not set. If you want seed, you are the pollinator.

The two parts you need to find

  • **The anthers** — the fuzzy ring of pollen-bearing parts around the inside of the flower. That is where the yellow dust comes from.
  • **The stigma** — the receptive part in the middle, splayed out on a stalk like a small octopus. Pollen goes here and nowhere else. It tends to sit higher and open wider as the morning warms, which is one reason not to be too early.

Looking down the throat

anthers around · stigma in the middle

From the side

stigma held clear above

The two parts you have to find, and the reason a torch helps: the anthers are the fuzzy ring of pollen-bearing tips around the inside of the flower, and the stigma is the pale green many-lobed crown standing up in the middle of them.The stigma standing above the anthers is not decoration. It is half the reason a flower rarely fertilises itself even before the genetics get involved.

Timing, which is most of the skill

  • Collect pollen at **dusk**, with the flower fully open, or at **first light** the next morning.
  • Apply it **early in the morning**. Fewer insects are moving and the stigma is opening.
  • **Pollen goes off fast** — by the day, quite possibly by the hour. Use it the day you took it if you possibly can.
  • **A wet flower is a lost flower** for that day. Rain or a heavy dew on the pollen makes it unusable. Let it dry and come back.

Taking pollen

  1. Step 1: Move the stigma aside

    Push it gently to one side with a finger, so you are not dusting it by accident before you have decided who the father is.

  2. Step 2: Brush the anthers

    Clean dry fingers, or a small soft brush. Work gently and let the pollen fall onto the petals below.

  3. Step 3: Tip it somewhere useful

    Fold a petal to run it into a paper envelope, a small cup, or a funnel over a tube. A creased index card does the job as well as anything bought for the purpose.

  4. Step 4: If nothing releases, come back later

    Some flowers hold onto their pollen until it has dried. An hour of early sun usually fixes it.

  5. Step 5: Clean up between plants, not between flowers

    Two flowers on one plant carry identical pollen, so there is nothing there to contaminate. Two different plants are exactly what you are trying to keep apart — wash and dry hands and tools in between.

One — the stigma out of the way

held aside · no accidental dusting

Two — brush the anthers

let it fall onto the segments

Three — tip it somewhere useful

a folded crease · a sealed tube

Move the stigma out of the way first, brush the anthers so the pollen falls onto the segments below, then fold one of them into a crease and run it off into something you can carry. A creased index card does the job as well as anything sold for it.Wash hands and tools between plants, not between flowers. Two flowers on one plant carry identical pollen, so there is nothing there to contaminate.

Putting it on

Roll a plain white cotton swab in the pollen and paint it onto the . White, so the yellow shows against it — a small trick that costs nothing and saves you guessing. A fine artist's brush works too, and for a flower you cannot reach, tape the swab to the end of a bamboo cane.

The alternative is to tip the pollen onto a small plate and sweep the stigma across it, which is easier on a flower you can bend down to you. If a flower has but will not shed any loose pollen at all, the fallback is to press whole anthers against the stigma. It works less often, but it works.

One — take the pollen

brush across the anthers

Two — paint the stigma

onto the green lobes

Three — label it

which clone, which way round

Three moves, at night while the flower is open: load a brush off the anthers of one clone, paint it onto the stigma of another, and mark the flower so you know later which cross it was.Mother first, father second — the cross is written in that order and it matters when the seed comes up.

If you want to know the father, bag it

A flower left open all night is open to every insect in the neighbourhood. You can still pollinate it by hand and you will probably be the main contributor, but the honest label for what comes out of it is — mother known, father a matter of opinion.

The fix is a fine mesh bag, the kind sold for keeping birds off fruit, tied over the bud before it opens. It comes off to work, goes straight back on, and stays on until the flower has wilted. A cotton mesh vegetable bag with a drawstring holds its position better than the plastic sort and does not go slack after a wash.

Bagged before it opens

father known

Left open

father unknown

A flower left open all night is open to every insect in the neighbourhood, so a hand-pollinated flower still has an uncertain father unless it was shut in first. The bag goes on before the bud opens and comes off once the fruit has set.Very little bought seed is bagged. That is scale rather than carelessness, and it is why a listed father on a cheap packet is a claim rather than a record.

Label it now. You will not remember.

Put an adjustable plant tag on the flower with the written on it, and tighten it as the flower shrivels so it cannot slip off. Then photograph or film every tag in place. The reason is dull and it will happen to you: tags come away with the dead flower, and a tag on the ground names nothing.

On the night

loose · on the tube

Two weeks on

tightened · below the dry flower

Label the flower on the night, not afterwards. An adjustable tag goes round the tube loose enough not to strangle it, and is tightened as the base swells — mother first, father second, in that order.Everything above the swelling dries and falls. The tag has to survive on the part that stays, which is why it goes on the tube and not on the petals.

Number every plant in the yard and keep a written notebook. Everyone who breeds seriously ends up here, and they all tell the same story about the season they thought they could hold it in their head.

Keeping pollen

Collect from whatever opens first, even when nothing else is anywhere near budding. Pollen in the freezer is the difference between the crosses you wanted and the crosses that happened to line up.

  • **For a few days:** a sealed bag with a small silica gel sachet in it, the pollen not touching the gel.
  • **For months:** dry it hard against a desiccant first, then freeze it in a contact lens case or a laboratory microtube. Both seal better than a zip bag, and the seal is the whole game.
  • **Expect months, hope for a year.** Older pollen still works, but it wants a heavier application to do the same job.

There is a real trade-off here, and it is worth deciding before the season rather than during it. Fresh pollen only gives you fewer crosses and a high proportion of them setting fruit. Bringing frozen pollen into the mix gives you far more crosses, and far fewer fruits with fewer seeds in them.

Two weeks later, you know

It took

base swelling

It did not

base dry · flower shed

About a week after the flower closes you know. A pollinated flower thickens at its base into a fruit; an unpollinated one dries at the base and falls off whole.

It took

The flower shrivels — often blackening, though pachanoi tends not to — while the green base behind it starts to swell. That swelling is the fruit. Once it has any real size to it, seed is close to certain.

Quick check

Did any of that land?

Nothing is scored or saved — this is just a way to catch the bit you skimmed.

  1. Question 1: Where does the pollen actually go?

  2. Question 2: Do you need to wash your hands between two flowers on the same plant?

  3. Question 3: Two weeks on, the flower has shrivelled and the green part behind it is swelling. What does that mean?

Ran into a word you did not know? The glossary has every one of them, and the questions page covers the ones people ask most.