Do Tomato Plants Need Pollination – Susan loves taking care of her tomato plants and has lots of tips and tricks on how to care for them.
Because tomatoes are self-pollinating flowers that are equipped with both male and female parts, only one tomato plant can produce a crop. They are usually wind-pollinated and sometimes bee-pollinated, but if not, they may need some help.
Do Tomato Plants Need Pollination
Pollen is usually released from morning to afternoon. Midday on warm, sunny days with low humidity is the optimal time for hand pollination.
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The first thing you need to do is find the beautiful yellow flowers. Then find the spot just behind the flower next to the stem. Be prepared to vibrate this area to distribute the pollen inside the flower.
All you have to do is give the vine a little vibration with a battery-operated toothbrush. Place the electric toothbrush just behind the open flowers and gently shake the plant. The vibration loosens the pollen inside the flower, which triggers pollination.
Place the bristles of the toothbrush on the stem of the flowers – not the flowers themselves – and turn it on. This is how a bumblebee would help. You just need to vibrate the flowers for a few seconds.
I would never think of using an electric toothbrush to pollinate tomato plants. Great idea! Using an old toothbrush just for this purpose makes sense. David L. Green is a gentleman we met electronically on Facebook who is very knowledgeable about the pollination process. In many cases, we consider him an expert.
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Several times when a fellow gardener has asked about a lack of pollination on their tomato, eggplant, and/or pepper plants, he has advised them to use diapap to help move the pollen around the flower and increase the plant’s chances of fruiting.
It has a mathematical component as well as a physical side, and is part of the fiber of nature itself.
The most common tuning fork will vibrate at the same frequency as the middle note C, which is approximately 250 Hz.
You see, bees can help move pollen in 2 ways. First placing it on himself and then on a female flower. This is how a bee can help a pumpkin, for example, and how most people imagine that bees help.
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In this way, bees can help plants whose flowers have both male and female components, such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.
The vibration can help displace this pollen enough to reach the female reproductive tract, helping it develop fruit.
Of course, this is not the only way to transfer pollen to these plants, the wind can also help, as can other insects.
For those gardeners who live in an area where there is not much breeze or bees, a diapapon is a simple and successful solution. With their lush green foliage, beautiful yellow flowers and rich red fruit, tomato plants make a beautiful and functional addition to the garden, deck or patio.
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There are several factors that can cause fruit loss, such as cool, wet conditions, high humidity or a lack of pollinators – a common problem in greenhouses.
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Self-fertile, each flower is equipped with male and female reproductive parts. So, with just a few minutes of extra effort a week, if conditions aren’t ideal, you can be sure of a bountiful, fruitful harvest!
Tomatoes are self-pollinating plants that have the perfect flowers for this task. This means that each flower contains male and female reproductive organs (ie stamen and stigma).
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This facilitates pollination as each flower releases pollen from the stamen to land on its own stigma. And after it is fertilized, a fruit develops.
Fertilization of tomatoes is usually achieved by humming or wind pollination. But many studies have found that bee pollination is most effective in terms of fruit size, yield amount, and increased seed count.
Spp.), vibrate their bodies to shake the pollen from the anthers or the parts of the stamens that hold the pollen.
Wind pollination occurs when a breeze shakes the flowers to release pollen. However, in the world of pollen grains,
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The pollen is sticky and heavy, so a good wind is needed to free the grains from the anthers.
Pollen release usually occurs from morning to late afternoon, with midday being the ideal time for release and transfer.
Sunny, warm weather and low humidity create optimal conditions for pollination, but doing it by hand means you don’t have to wait for ideal conditions. Some pollen transfer continues to occur in less than ideal weather.
To mimic conditions of wind or buzzing insects, any of the following methods will improve fruiting.
Best Ways To Hand Pollinate Tomatoes
This can be done by gently but quickly tapping the tip of each flower. You can also swing the flower stems in short, staccato bursts.
A small artistic brush is an effective tool for collecting and distributing pollen in a manner similar to that of nectar-gathering insects.
The brush may not be expensive, but it should be with natural hair – pollen sticks to natural hair better than to plastic.
Carefully lift the flower and rub or swirl the brush back and forth and around the inside of the petals, down the pistil and over the tip of the stigma. This will collect and transfer pollen grains.
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To avoid cross-pollination, always use a different brush for different tomato varieties or wash your brush in isopropyl alcohol before switching to another variety.
Cotton plugs are another effective tool, as their finely pressed cotton surface is ideal for collecting and distributing pollen.
You can also collect the pollen in a small dish and use the swab (or brush) to gently apply it to the tip of the stigma of each flower.
There are electric vibrators available for commercial operations, but a child’s toothbrush does the trick for the home gardener at a cost of just a few dollars.
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Simply place the vibrating toothbrush head on the flower base or on the stem of the flower and buzz for a second or two before moving on to the next color.
Aim for each open flower and repeat every few days until the plants stop blooming to ensure that every flower on the cluster is fertilized.
To enjoy a bountiful harvest of delicious ripe red varieties, hand pollination ensures that each flower has the best chance to fruit.
Shake like the wind or buzz like a bee, it’s easy to do and only takes minutes to dramatically improve your performance – something every gardener craves!
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Photos by Lorna Kring © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Uncredited photos: Shutterstock.
A writer, artist and entrepreneur, Lorna is also a longtime gardener who became addicted to organic and natural gardening methods at an early age. Nowadays, her vegetable garden is smaller to make way for decorative landscapes full of color, fragrance, art and hidden treasures. Cultivating and designing the perfect garden spot is one of her favorite things to do – especially getting together with family and friends for good times and good food (straight from the garden, of course)! I recently visited a fellow master gardener and saw his beautiful raised plant beds in his yard. He had a bunch of extremely healthy tomato plants neatly enclosed in wire cages. As we talked, he picked up a stick about five feet long with a soft pad at the end wrapped in tape. He gently tapped each tomato cage with the padded end of the stick a few times, shaking each plant as we went. Confused, I watched him until he had done all the dozen plants and asked, “What’s going on with the stick?”
He replied that regularly tapping the tomatoes during the heat of the day greatly increased his tomato production. His argument was very convincing.
I was so intrigued that I did some of my own research and found quite a few references to this method. It is very simple: to get the best result from most crops, there must be proper pollination. Most plants have either perfect flowers, meaning they have both male and female components, or imperfect flowers, meaning they have only male or female components. Tomatoes have a perfect color, so they are self pollinated. For good tomato production, there must be enough pollen carried from the male anthers to the female stigma. This usually happens in nature through the movement of wind and pollinators. Large growers who grow tomatoes in greenhouses introduce pollinators because there is little or no air movement. They dealt with this in various ways, to create movement in the plants with cables attached to each plant that connect to a device that regularly shakes the plants, or by introducing bumblebees. Both are very successful.
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In my friend’s case, the garden is very enclosed and air movement is minimal. His wand method does the work of the wind. For those of us with larger plantings for our tomatoes, the lack of air movement may not be a problem,
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