You Must Pollinate These Fruits and Vegetables by Hand in Order to Grow More

Tickling tomato flowers and peeling squash flowers are probably not common tasks on your garden to-do list, but it turns out that hand-pollination, combined with natural processes, can actually increase the yield of many staple garden vegetables.

With this simple trick, you can get a more generous return on all the money and hard work you’ve put into your vegetable patch. Here are a few ways to hand pollinate your crops that are easy for any gardener, no matter your level of experience.

What will you need

For this project, you will need a small brush no larger than a quarter of an inch, a cotton swab or toothbrush, and some rubbing alcohol to clean the brush.

What plants can be pollinated by hand?

Many types of common garden plants can be pollinated by hand, including tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, beans, peppers, corn, and strawberries, to name but a few. If you can find stamens and anthers in your plant’s flower, you can probably hand-pollinate it.

The stamen is usually found in the center of the flower and looks like small tendrils with dusty rounded tips (known as anthers) that produce pollen. The fall of pollen from the stamen to the stigma, the sticky surface on the inside of the calyx, is what causes successful pollination and allows the plant to produce fruit.

How to pollinate self-pollinating plants manually

For self-pollinating plants like tomatoes or peppers, brush the inside of the flower with a brush to dislodge some of the pollen so it falls on the pistil, prompting the female receptors in the flower to pick up the male DNA. Clean your brush and let it dry completely before moving on to the next flower to avoid cross-pollination. Or live dangerously and cross-pollinate your self-pollinating plants to encourage a little more variety and surprise in your garden.

How to pollinate cross-pollinating plants manually

For cross-pollinated plants, such as squash or cucumbers, you will need to be able to identify the male and female flowers on the plant in order to deliver the genetic information contained in the pollen to the female pollen receptors. In most cases, male flowers grow in groups, and female flowers grow individually. A striking sign of a male flower is dusty pollen at the tips of the anthers. To access the pollen, you can tear off the petals and dip the brush into the pollen, then gently touch the brush to the female flower. As if you were applying paint with a brush, remember to dip your brush into the pollen frequently to ensure even coverage.

Use Hormone Spray to Increase Pollen Fall

If you prefer a broader approach to hand pollination, you can try what’s called a bloom spray . It’s a spray containing a natural hormone called cytokine that encourages plants to shed pollen, which causes the flower to bear fruit. Since the hormone spray is mostly inert after application, it is safe and only costs about $8 for a full spray bottle.

Try pheromone bait

If you want to attract more natural pollinators without being directly involved, use bee bait to signal honey bees that there is good nectar in your garden. Using a pheromone-based spray to attract more natural pollinators can help overcome the lack of pollination in your garden. It will also increase your yields over time and help your local population of bees and butterflies find a food source.