Gardening tips: how to hand pollinate tomatoes for larger production of your container garden. Many gardeners leave pollination to the bees, but if you want to see the best harvests, you can take matters into your own hands.
In this video I am going to show you the best way to hand pollinate your tomatoes. All you need is a electric toothbrush and a few minutes of your time.
Many edible plants such as tomatoes are self-fertilizing or self-pollinating. This means that you only need one plant in the garden for fruit to set. In the case of tomatoes, the male and female parts are contained in the same flower. This truly makes tomato plants a top contender for container gardening.
Self-pollinating plants will produce without any intervention on your part, but you can help nature along to really reap the rewards. Wind and bees normally move the pollen around the plants, letting pollination occur, but what happens when nature doesn’t cooperate? Poor pollination happens all too often. High temperatures, humidity, and too much moisture can severely hinder your crop. So why not take matters into your own hands?
We all spend hours in the garden planting and caring for our little green friends, so I say lets go the extra step and pollinate by hand. Hand pollination of self-fertile plants is easy and does not require much time or money. All you need is an electric toothbrush and you are ready to hand pollinate. Just like the wind or a bee, the vibrations from the toothbrush loosen the pollen from the flower and allow pollination to occur. Simply turn on the toothbrush and gently place it behind the open flower. This will distribute the pollen to the flowers stigma. You will often see puffs of pollen shoot out of the flower when you do this. You should see the results of your hand pollination in a day or two. I like to repeat this process every other day for the best results.
If you are like me and you want to get the most out of your garden, then try to hand pollinate your tomatoes. I am sure that once you try it you will never go back. For more gardening tips and projects visit my blog http://www.getforked.ca .
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41 Comments
love your videos. I've seen that people use their fingers or a cuetips but this way is easier. I will try this.
Love the technique. Worked great for me to gather pollen to cross pollinate with another plant. How did the self watering bucket work?
Robert, Great video. How did your plants yield? Do you have any information on production for the container garden tomatoes?
Awesome. !! Thanks.
Brilliant. Straight to the point. Thanks!
thanks brother
Robert, you just stated a myth – that tomatoes "self pollinate." Then you went on to show how to be the pollinator. Isn't that a bit oxymoronic? The simple fact is that tomatoes pollinate very poorly without help. So please don't keep on propagating this myth. Tomatoes are self fertile, or self pollenizing. But that's a different thing than self pollinating.
Thanks for the info I want to try to assist pollination this year, for the first time. and this method seems fool proof..
Not that serious
I use head electric shaver , it works perfect
I am in sunny SW Florida. Trying to keep vegetable plants healthy while completely exposed to the insanely active insect population is nearly impossible without some really heavy-duty chemical intervention. This year, I am growing them inside my screened-in lanai in self-watering containers. Unfortunately, this means the bees cannot get to them either. The electric toothbrush pollination method looks so easy and effective. I am trying it now hoping it works as advertised. Thanks for the video!
UPDATE: After a week or two of molesting my tomato plants (and eggplants and pepper plants as well) daily with the electric toothbrush, I have started to see DOZENS of new fruit buds developing on all of my plants! 😀
I'm just afraid I may have over-did it now ;-. I cannot believe how simple and effective this method is! Thanks again!
Thanks for the vid – had heard of this and tried it, and wondered if I had done it correctly… So far looks like I did OK 🙂 and my plants are finally producing tiny tomatoes.
Thank you. Very helpful.
I usually just spank my tomatoes and peppers. But the flowers are dying and I am loosing a lot of possible fruit. Do you know anything to stop this from happening?
My peppers are really bad. I have tons of flowers and than I find them dead or they have fallen off. Thanks for your video… Got to get a toothbrush now. Kris
You're right, but this isnt a video for botany or plant biology. In standard conversational English, 'self pollinate' means if you leave the plant to its own devices in terms of flowering, one way or another, many of its flowers will end up bearing fruit. Which is true.
Does it really works?I just heard something like this. Pollination is a very important process for plants to obtain a very productive growth. But I'm glad to learn these tips. Nice information indeed!
Great tip !!
Great explanations, very simple and easy to understand. This is the answers for my tomatoes garden, exciting to see more yields of tomatoes, surely I will apply this technique to my plants. thank you.
great vid! Thanks!!!!! this will be a great experiment for me to grow indoors year round………..
Thankyou very much! I wanted to grow tomatoes indoors but didn`t know how they could be pollinated.
That's pretty darn creative
Thank you very much but how many days I work way once
Can you hand pollinate blueberries using the electric toothbrush trick? A method I used a day or two ago was I took my electric toothbrush and I vibrated the branches and the flower clusters. I could see the pollen coming out as I vibrated the flowers. My thinking is that by doing so, the pollen will fall onto the female parts within the flower and thus set the fruit just like on a tomato. What are your thoughts?
CREATIVE IDEA
This will be my first year doing my own pollinating. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for posting. Great video!!!!!!!
Concise and helpful! Thank you for explaining HOW tomatoes pollinate in the first place. That helps my understanding of why this technique works. Thank you!
How many times I have to do it?
Thank you so much that spent your best chance to slow this video and explaining very clearly that make me more understanding in the name of i am a agronomy student, in Cambodia. i hopeful you have more agriculture video. I have been pollination tomatoes in greenhouse but i used electrics vibration different your electrics toothbrush.
This is so fun to do! I grew tomatoes indoors using a grow light and used your method to pollinate the flowers. It's so cool to see them blow pollen out the minute the vibrator hits the flower. Happy flower – lol! I have lots of red tomatoes growing indoors right now. 🙂
Are you using a spin brush to pollinate? How does that loosen the pollen? Is the pollen on the inside of the flower? Where is it going to?
Must’ve been in a messy room to think of this one #psat
1:18 #PSAT2017
I started "toothbrushing" my tomatoes about two years ago. It really works! I went from about 30% pollination to 90-100%. It's amazing to see such a success rate!
Absolute genius. Salute.
Genius I’ll get one of these toothbrushes at the dollar store.
thx
My Mother always used a rabbits tail to dab all the flowers, she used to get bumper crops in the greenhouse. ( might seem a bit gruesome this day and age, but wild rabbit was a regular dish when I was young in our area)
Well,…..ya learn something every day! Dollar Store here I come! This is exciting!!
Great tip thanks.