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[Hélène Dessureault <interverbis@videotron.ca>]

This is my experience with hand pollination.

 

For three years I believe, I had one apple tree blooming at home, far from any other source of pollination. Since I was in a rush to get apple from my tree, I used to bring a small metal container, the type that comes with fancy candies, and I would stop at wild trees along the road on my way back from work to collect pollen with a little brush and pollinate my trees with the fresh pollen with that same brush...! 

Needless to say, it is a long tedious job, best left to bees. I only had a few apples from it, mainly on the lower branches. This is not something to be done on a large scale.

 

If you look closely at the balls of pollen in different flowers from the same tree, you will notice that they are not all at the same stage of maturity. This is how the tree stretches its chance of bearing fruits within a blooming period, in case of adverse weather... time for insects to find the tree... or what not?

 

Pollen appears short live. Some pollen is yellow, fresh and moist, some is more brown and more dried up at a given time. I collected only fresh pollen (you will learn to recognize the difference quickly) from the donor tree and applied it to newly formed flowers on the recepient tree, which are also easy to distinguish from older flower with faded petals.  

The yellow, fresh and moist pollen is what bees take the trouble to bring home. They don't bother with the dried up brown pollen. Whether it is yellow pollen from apple trees, or orange or green pollen from other plants (yellow and orange seems most common), bees always go for the fresh stuff.

 

The metal can worked fine to maintain moisture, but It would not be good I think to delay the pollination process and keep the pollen too long...  The insect pollinating usually transport the pollen from one plant to the other.... They don' t take it home, put it in the fridge or the freezer for a while....

 

Come to think of it, it would be interesting to know how long pollen will last, and under what conditions...

 

Any ideas?   : )

 

Hélène, zone 3-4

North fo Ottawa

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Hilborn.E@epamail.epa.gov

To: North American Fruit Explorers

Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:30 PM

Subject: [NAFEX] Hand pollination - pome fruits - timing

I have a small pome orchard with poor fruit set last year.  I had lots of blooms, so I am suspecting poor pollination. I plan to hand pollinate this year and wonder about the timing.

 

If I collect pollen, when is the best time to apply it to the pistils?  When blooms are open and the stamens of the flower are yellow; the blooms are open and the stamens are brown; the petals are starting to brown; the petals are falling?

 

Any ideas?

 

Betsy Hilborn

7a, NC

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