Pollination - a helping hand.

[JDog]

For the last two weeks or so this part of the Wolds has had mostly cold easterly winds with temperatures not getting much above 8 degrees and with a wind chill factor much lower than that. This has coincided with the flowering of many hedgerow plants, particularly Prunus spinosa, but also my ornamental fan trained pear. The window for pollination of this particular plant is only a few days and whilst it has been in flower I have never seen a bee or a fly in the garden let alone on these flowers. 

There are 120 flowers on the plant which produces delicious fruit so I was not going to stand idly by whilst the cold reduced the chances of pollination to zero so out came one of my wife's paint brushes and I used it to gently brush the stamens and then move from one group of flowers to another attempting to imitate the pollinating activities of insects. Whether this will work is anyone's guess.

 

[SpringDon]

Non consensual insemination? Skating on thin ice nowadays. Hope you get a good crop though.

[islandgun]

 my plum tree has only just come into flower !

The OP reminded me of this clip which i remember from tv..   oops

 

[The Mighty Prawn]

I have fond memories of Dad and I 'tickling' the flowers in his greenhouse to ensure pollination

[sandspider]

I've done it for tomatoes and chillis in the greenhouse, and it certainly seemed to help.

[Newbie to this]

When I used to grow chillies, I used a small artist paintbrush to aid the pollination process. It worked very well.

[Rim Fire]

one of the things i used was a rabbits tail works well

[benbaikal]

China been doing this for the last few years due to no bee population 

[Bigbob]

Aye all the tomato growers at work ask for a couple of rabbit tails each every spring 

[figgy]

I used to just use my finger tip.

[Dougy]

My dad used to do this with fucias. He would cross pollinate certian coloured plants to try and alter the original. It was very interesting as a child to see the resilts over time. Also grafting different plants to have 2 seperate colours on one plant  

[ditchman]

On 16/04/2019 at 15:22, Rim Fire said:

one of the things i used was a rabbits tail works well

our next door neighbor always did that with the toms and melons in the big green house he had..........he also had load of ferret nets for the melons ....and i must admit the odd one did go missing..

[Mice!]

On ‎16‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 10:27, JDog said:

For the last two weeks or so this part of the Wolds has had mostly cold easterly winds with temperatures not getting much above 8 degrees and with a wind chill factor much lower than that. This has coincided with the flowering of many hedgerow plants, particularly Prunus spinosa, but also my ornamental fan trained pear. The window for pollination of this particular plant is only a few days and whilst it has been in flower I have never seen a bee or a fly in the garden let alone on these flowers. 

There are 120 flowers on the plant which produces delicious fruit so I was not going to stand idly by whilst the cold reduced the chances of pollination to zero so out came one of my wife's paint brushes and I used it to gently brush the stamens and then move from one group of flowers to another attempting to imitate the pollinating activities of insects. Whether this will work is anyone's guess.

 

Got your work cut out there, certainly seems strange though the lack of insects you've seen, or not. Up in the north west its been like summer on sunny days, as if were a month in front of the calendar, birds and bees a plenty.

[JDog]

An update.

My artificial insemination, or a sneaky pollinator, has worked. There are ten beautiful pears on my small fan trained Pyrus. I hope there are more next year as I have tied out more shoots.

 

[Mice!]

very nice 👍 

[Jaymo]

On 16/04/2019 at 10:48, islandgun said:

 my plum tree has only just come into flower !

The OP reminded me of this clip which i remember from tv..   oops

 

Haha

wife told me to stop being childish and stop laughing having watched that