I pollinated cherry tomatoes on my balcony with a cotton swab for the first time and it's working well!
I pollinated cherry tomatoes on my balcony with a cotton swab for the first time and it's working well!
Alt: Photo of young green cherry tomatoes on a tomato plant on a balcony. The photo mostly shows green tomato plant foliage. There are some yellow tomato flowers in the top left corner of the frame.
I hand pollinate a lot of my plants, especially cherry tomatoes. If you don't do it, you'll probably still get plenty of tomatoes, but you won't get that nice neat row.
FYI Tomato flowers are cleistogamous and are 95%+ self-pollinating. So pollen on tomato flowers doesn't actually need to be transfered between flowers. The flowers just need to be shaken up a bit to get the pollen to drop from the anther to the pistil.
So take something that vibrates like a electric toothbrush, massager, or other personal devices (wink, wink) and shake the hell out of the flowers.
TIL! Thank you kind gardener.
Nice! I've helped pollinate before. Did you go from flowers on the same plant or other plants?
I went from flowers on the same plant. Admittedly, I know nothing about pollination.
I'll try that. I'm sure it can't hurt. Thanks!