- Francis Barnswallow
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Been wondering about this for a few days
Most likely a dumb question but, can you pollinate your own plants?
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- Super Green Thumb
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- rainbowgardener
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That's right.rainbowgardener wrote:Depends on what plants though. Some are a lot easier than others and some don't need any help.
Plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are all self-pollinating. Each flower has both male and female parts, so all they need is for a bug to crawl across one and sprinkle pollen from one part to another. You can help this process if you jiggle the plants a little when the flowers are open.
Other plants like squash have separate male and female flowers, which need pollen to be taken from a male flower to a female one. You can do this yourself by using a small paintbrush to transfer pollen or just taking the whole male flower and smushing it into the female one.
Other plants, like beans, are so strongly self-pollinating that they can pollinate themselves before the flower even emerges.
- Francis Barnswallow
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- stella1751
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- Francis Barnswallow
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- stella1751
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The female flowers have a teeny tiny watermelon at their base (behind the flower; the males just have a regular flower stem behind their flowers. Here's a photo of the two from [url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Male_and_female_watermelon_1458.JPG]Wikipedia[/url].
I like this illustrated website on pollinating watermelons: [url=https://www.mybalconyjungle.com/hand_pollination.html]My Balcony Jungle[/url]. That's what I read when another member clued me in, earlier this summer, to how it was done
I like this illustrated website on pollinating watermelons: [url=https://www.mybalconyjungle.com/hand_pollination.html]My Balcony Jungle[/url]. That's what I read when another member clued me in, earlier this summer, to how it was done
- Francis Barnswallow
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Usually, that's the case. You can pollinate them just like you do with squash...only on a way smaller scale .Francis Barnswallow wrote:Awesome. Thank you all for your help.
btw, can I do this with cucumbers as well? I've noticed that I have a ton of little cucumbers that just turn yellow and die off. Is that b/c they haven't been pollinated as well?