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hand pollination question

xhasti

xhasti

I have a handful of superhots growing (Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Ghost, Reaper) as well as a couple of Chocolate Habaneros in the same bed as a Purple Bell and a Green Bell.  Of the hot ones the Scorpion was the first to develop flowers (maybe a month ago) and the scorpion's pepper buds have all turned yellow and dropped not long after the flower fell off.  Temps have been 90+ consistently in Charlotte this summer, so may be heat I guess.  I just started hand pollinating with a small paint brush to see whether that could be it.  
My question is will it do something weird if I go down the line and pollinate these different varieties of peppers back to back?  Does the pollen of one variety contaminate a different type of pepper somehow?
 
Also trying to figure out how the bees could be pollinating the sweet peppers but ignoring the hots.  
 
Thanks,
 
Justin
 
It's possible that your peppers aren't necessarily ready to bear, even if you are ready for them to. Be a little patient.

Do you have any signs of deficiencies?
 
To answer your other question... yes, if you use the same brush and go down the line, you could cross-pollinate everything from the 2nd plant you do, all the way to the last plant you do.
 
When you cross pollinate it will not affect this seasons plants but will affect your seeds and what you get if you save seeds to use next year. You will get crosses if the pepper is within the same family as the others which it sounds like you said you have Chinese and annums. This years plants should not have an issues at all. As for bees ignoring your hots and not your bells, don't forget most of the hots have thinker canopies and can sometimes be more compact than a bell that does not always have a ton or leaf coverage and the flowers are better seen on a plant without a thick canopy and tons of leaf coverage. Not always the case, but when they are looking for the quickest and fastest meal they will probably choose the readily available flower.
 
xhasti said:
Temps have been 90+ consistently in Charlotte this summer, so may be heat I guess. 
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Quite possible. Hot weather can cause flower drop, and chinenses like your superhots tend to be less heat tolerant than annuums and baccatums when it comes to setting pods, in my experience.
 
xhasti said:
 
My question is will it do something weird if I go down the line and pollinate these different varieties of peppers back to back?  Does the pollen of one variety contaminate a different type of pepper somehow?
 
Click to expand...
 
That depends on what you mean by "weird" and "contaminate" .You would essentially be doing what bees do and tracking pollen from flower to flower. So this will probably cause some cross-pollination to occur. So if Scorpion pollen gets into a Bell pepper flower, some of the seeds in that pepper could be Scorpion/Bell crosses. So if you grew the seeds out the next generation would reflect the genetics of both parents. But the peppers on the mother plant that you cross-pollinated would be completely normal; only the seeds would be crossed. So you wouldn't have spicy bell peppers on the mother plant or anything. Cross-pollination is only a concern if you plan on saving seeds. If you want pure seeds, then you want to isolate flowers to prevent crosses. But if you are just going to eat the pods and not save seeds then it won't matter.
 
xhasti said:
 
Also trying to figure out how the bees could be pollinating the sweet peppers but ignoring the hots.  
 
Click to expand...
 
I assume the bees are pollinating everything, but like I said the chinenses are more prone to flower drop when it gets hot. I assume your sweet peppers are bells and other annuum types; I have found annuums to be more heat tolerant and set pods more easily in hot weather than do chinenses. So it is likely because of the plants themselves, and not the bees.
 
Chinense varieties are tropical/equatorial in origin. That they have a problem setting flowers in high heat and humidity is a myth. That they would have more difficulty setting flowers/pods than baccatum/annuum is ridiculous. I have infinitely more problems growing garden variety peppers in a subtropical climate, than I do with any superhot.

Chinense often take longer to hold flowers than other varieties. Mine often don't really open the bounty gates until after about 4-5 months. So again, my question to you is, do you have any signs of deficiencies?

Also, if you are hand pollinating, and you have flower drop, this is one of the clearest signs from the universe that your pollination was unsuccessful, and that you may have, indeed, cross pollinated with something that doesn't want to mate with your Chinense.

And as I first stated, you may just be too anxious. Just try not to "fiddle" for awhile, and see what happens!
 
I've got a red savina right now that is absolutely covered in flowers...i've got tons of flower drop too! I attribute it to the fact that the plant just can't sustain that many fruits. It is setting pods, plenty of them... but the flower drop to pod set ratio is like 4:1 at least.
 
I think D3monic talked about losing countless hand pollinated crosses just to get 2 or 3 pods to stick...the different species don't necessarily play together nicely.
 
This is year 1 for me.  I tried growing reapers from seed but after germination they wouldn't grow so for now I'm just satisfied with growing superhots from seedlings/plants I can find locally--hence the somewhat standard reaper/scorpion/ghost lineup.  I am not concerned about seeds for next year, just with this year's pepper yield.
 
This is my bed, (from right to left--> ) 2 sweets in foreground, then reaper, scorpion, chocolate hab, ghost (blue bucket), chocolate hab
 
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Reaper, my most robust-looking superhot but no flowers/buds yet.
 
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Trinidad Moruga Scorpion that I mentioned.  Very lanky but lots of flowers.  So far after all of the flowers have bloomed and dropped, the stem with each pepper bud has yellowed and fallen
 
a8IsRLA.jpg

 
Bhut jolokia in blue bucket.  Doing fairly well, just developing some tiny flower buds on it.  Both the scorpion and the ghost started on my back sun porch, but I had to bring them outside because I got too many gnats/fruit flies on the porch.  They weathered some early sun scald which lost them a good amount of leaves about a month ago but are doing better now.
 
mncC4W1.jpg
 
I planted them with Osmocote originally (early April) and I've watered in 5-1-1 fish fertilizer a couple of times since.  The leaves started cupping so I assumed high nitrogen, cut all fertilizers a month and a half ago to try to flush it out.  Nothing since then.
 
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