Monday, July 29, 2013

Tips for cross-pollinating tomatoes

1. Tag the flower first, otherwise tagging might inadvertently damage the fragile pistil.

2. Emasculate: choose a flower that had not yet opened, with slightly immature coloring.  Then with tweezers, remove sepals, then petals, then carefully remove anther cone; note,  pulling it all off intact may pull off the pistil.   Therefore I like to pick off individual anthers.  If you pull off a whole anther down to the base, it can break the "ring" attaching the anther cone to the base,  and may make it easier to remove the rest of the cone.

3. Pollinate with pollen from the male parent.

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