My pollination attempts began a while ago with the chillies, due to the fact that my house is rather lacking in both wind and bees. So I've been helping my chillies "get it on" by moving the pollen around the flowers on the plant with my finger. It seems to be working well as there are loads of fruits forming. Sometimes I must miss one because occasionally the whole flower and it's stem just drop off.
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| This chilli's seen some action |
I hadn't been worrying about the plants outside because I presumed that they could sort this kind of thing out for themselves. Although I haven't seen any bees (do bees get vertigo do you think?) we certainly have plenty of wind. Most of plants seem to be happy - there are tomatoes and peas forming and I haven't had a hand in that, so some magic must be happening on it's own:
But recently my runner bean flowers have been falling off and after a bit of googling I think that they might need some manual intervention. The last 2 nights I have been out with my paintbrush to transfer the pollen around and between the flowers, although I'm slightly hampered by the fact that I don't know my anthers from my stigmas and it isn't as obvious as it is with the chillies.
Hopefully this is what they were after. Once again my plants are educating and amazing me.
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