Shake your Tomatoes and Peppers to Increase Pollination

Last week I posted some helpful information on growing cucumbers indoors and two ways you can help nature with the process of pollination, remember?For those who don’t, refer to last week’s post.

Unlike the cucumber, tomatoes and peppers have a perfect flower.This simply means the male and female structures are found in the same blossom. Some pollination and fruit production will take place with little or no help from you, the gardener. However, conditions are different indoors than those on the patio and you can improve pollination and production by practicing a tip I’ll share with you. It’s the topic of today’s post.

Before I move on to tomatoes and peppers, let’s take a look at the growth of the cucumber I pollinated three weeks ago.

Pollinated Cucumber 2 Weeks Ago

Same Cucumber 10 Days Later

The pepper and tomato I'm featuring this week were seeded 83 days ago on November 2nd. The first blossoms appeared at 70 days.  With new blossoms appearing daily, your goal should be to get fruit from as many of those blossoms as possible.  You can maximize production by giving your plants a gentle shake each day. It's that easy.  If your plants were growing outside, the wind and the flutter of bee's wings would shake the pollen loose.  Inside you can shake the plant or individual flowers to free the pollen to enter the stigma and pollinate the flower. This shake is also a good reason to check your plants daily.

California Wonder

New blossoms appear daily

Bushsteak Tomato

Soon to be a cluster of vine ripened tomatoes

How do you know if your daily plant shake is producing the results you want? Keep your eye out for your first little pepper like the one pictured below.

Visit us at www.mygardenpost.com to improve your indoor gardening results. We grow more with less space. Thanks for following, Oliver