Greenhouse pollination

I am cultivating plants for my own seeds… I have 3 males & 3 females (overkill I know, but that’s how the dice rolled) Females are forming flowers and males pods are beginning to burst. Normally I would shake the Hell out of tomatoes for pollination, but in this case I’m wondering if I could just cut off a couple of male branches and use those for pollination since they won’t be useful as a plant. ? Thoughts?

I work backwards from mature seeds. I assume 8 weeks from pollination for a good seed harvest. In my experience, if you pollinate too early, and then pollinate again, your older bracts are rotting away by the time your latter bracts have matured seeds. I’ll note that you can count on seeds maturing a wee bit after you harvest. I’d dry-trim, just to be on the safe side, if that’s something you’re counting on.

You can harvest the males anytime (week 6 of flower is the longest I’ve let them go) and dry them to harvest all the pollen. Or you can prune them down to almost nothing. You don’t really need to baby them. I’m assuming you’re thinking of putting cuttings in water like a floral arrangement, and I think that would also work for a time.

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The plants are the same age- so I assumed from nature’s way- they would pollinate accordingly. I thought I’d pollinate soon since the males are splitting and dropping pollen. Just pollinate once. ?? I know in nature the wind and bees pollinate but I’m not sure for how long.

If you let pollination go on too long, in my experience, you get a lot of non-viable seeds. I have to assume this lowers the number of viable seeds as well, since the plants are wasting resources on the duds.

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I thought I’d pollinate maybe four days, then remove the males from the greenhouse. As I said, not sure how long pollination would last in nature - but here in N. Mo. with the WIND probably not long. lol

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That sounds good. Keep that 8wk mark in mind.

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8 weeks until harvest… :slight_smile: