Bhut Jolokia flowers produce no pollen

[Sick625]

Yeah Indoor Your Gonna See Flower Dropping. ...Dont Water To Much Can Cause Flower Drop Happened To Me...Takes Patience Also EXPECT to See More Flower Dropping...Good Luck

 

[DatilDaddy]

Juggalo

 

[Sujai]

I am having the same problem with my first time Bhut Jolokia plants, at least three flowers drop daily

Some say that excess mineral in water could be the problem, I do have a reverse osmosis water purifier at home for drinking water suplly

My question is can I use water from the purifier to water my Bhuts? also would like to know what should be the frequency of watering...

Regards,
Sujai

 

[Dulac]

Do the anthers open?

 

[Sujai]

Do the anthers open?

I don't know how to see if the anthers are open, could use some help for sure

The plant has so many buds and many more new buds are forming, every day at least two of the buds flower and stays open for two to three days and just drops off after that

Regards,
Sujai

 

[Martian13]

Mine dropped literally 1000's of flowers from March to August, and the plant wouldn't get bigger. I started giving it about 4 hours of shade on a north facing wall. The thing has taken off and I have about 100 neon green mouth bombs and counting. Obviously this plant is in a pot. (15 gal). It was disheartening to watch for months, but patience prevailed.

 

[Sujai]

Thanks Martian,

Will see if shading the plants works for me, makes sense as we have very hot sunny days here reaching up to 93 ~ 94

Regards,
Sujai

 

[Dulac]

I don't know how to see if the anthers are open, could use some help for sure

Here is a pic of how anthers look closed, partial, and open on a C. annuum flower:

The anthers move away from the pistil. There are slits in the anthers. The pollen comes out of the slits, so if there is pollen you should be able to see it with the naked eye. You can see the yellow pollen coming from the slits in C. In D the anthers are covered with pollen. Anthers will open once a morning or day and secrete pollen.You just have to check the flower to figure out what time that particular plant's anthers open up. I've been doing a lot of crosses this season. The anthers on my plants begin to open up around 1:00 pm for C. chinese. I think this information will let you know if they are producing pollen. I have flowers drop here and there. They typically have pollen on them. I'm not sure why those flowers drop and others don't, lol.

 

[Sujai]

Thanks Dulac
I haven't given that much attention to the flowers

I had pinched the corolla off of few fallen flowers and the anthers in them had very small amount of white powdery substance on them which I assumed to be pollen, I thought that the flowers were ready for pollination once the flower was open, its already mid night here and will check the flowers to see if they have got pollen on them tomorrow.

once again thanks for the pic Dulac, I am learning a lot from THP

Regards,
Sujai

 

[thegreenman]

Thanks Martian,

Will see if shading the plants works for me, makes sense as we have very hot sunny days here reaching up to 93 ~ 94

Regards,
Sujai

What are your night time temperatures? if over 85f then flowers will drop until it gets cooler.

 

[Sujai]

What are your night time temperatures? if over 85f then flowers will drop until it gets cooler.

Both daytime and night time temps have cooled down a bit today, day time its around 80 ~ 85 and night time around 60 ~ 65
hoping it remains this way for some time to come

 

[Sujai]

Thanks to all those who shared their knowledge on flower drop

I moved the pod to partial shade next to a wall which also kind of acted as wind barrier, cut down on watering as the plant was in shade for full afternoon

This morning before starting to work I saw some three flowers with dry brown petals sticking to the plant, hoping they are good to go all the way to ripe pods a month from now as all my previous flowers just dropped off fresh

Regards,
Sujai

 

[Martian13]

I also noticed that the stem will lighten in color rapidly before the flower drop. The ones that started podding turned dark.

 

[Sujai]

I had cut down on watering, did not feed the plants for three weeks now and moved them to partial shade
plants look health as ever with new growth and lot of buds / flowers, but still the flower drop is continuing like crazy... around 30 flowers dropped in last two days....

Came to know that Zinc deficiency might be caused by higher phosphorus level in feed (I did give them high phosphorus feed for initial two months after reading how it helps root growth and cell division )

Zinc deficiency reduces pollen viability, which leads to flower drop

I am planing to give them foliar feeding with micro nutritions containing Zinc and other trace elements that I have, will post an update latter if this helps.

Regards,
Sujai

 

[Spice 8]

I'm growing some superhots indoors with just window light and have noticed extremely low pollen production for chinense varieties. The annum however rain pollen...
What I've had to do is pick a few flowers off the desired plant and crush the stamen with the back of my thumbnail to release the tiny bit of pollen and then use that to pollenate the flowers if I want pure seed.
If you want pods and don't care about the seed purity, then just collect a ton of annum pollen and pollenate your superhots.

Yup this is what I do, especially if I have chinenses indoors, out doors I have no problem and they put out a good amount of pods. Indoors my luck aint so great. So, what I do is have a "heavy pollinator" like an annuum or a baccatum close at hand and use its pollen to do up the chinenses. I dont mind crosses as I choose annuums or a baccatums I would like to cross with the chinense. Like for example Florescent Purple (annuum) x Fatalii, Peter Pepper x Cili Goronong and so on.

 

[georgej]

I had similar problem with my habs and every time I attempted hand pollinating, flowers had nothing or they dropped.
I put a fan on in the next room and made sure that air circulation was good. Started fruiting like mad! I also pruned alot so plant energy went to fruiting not foliage

 

[DocNrock]

Glad I'm not the only one to use annuum flowers to pollenate the supers. Just used a Chinese 5-color flower to pollenate a Moruga. Might just have to save the seeds from that one.