• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

Isolating plants

You're gonna get a few different answers in this thread. Some people use little baggies, for example. Personally, I dont use anything. Neither do most. You'd be surprised to find out how many big name seed-sellers don't have any anti-cross methods in place. As well they shouldn't. Let mother nature run her course. Hell, it's how we've gotten most of the great-tasting peppers we know of, like the ButchT.
 
Try a site search, there are many tecniques
ButchT was not a recent cross, it is stable and has been for many years
Isolation is very important to me, I'd rather not waste another season growing crap or unknowns
 
I read an article of an interview where Butch said that he believed they may have crossed with a Cumari Ou Pasarhino. (Not sure about the spelling.)
What's funny is that people swear by certain seed sellers, but what they DON'T do is pay attention to pics and videos made by those very same people where they show their plants are touching. Yet people STILL buy from them. I wonder why...maybe it'ss because, even though crosses DO happen, as long as you take the correct precautions, crosses are not that big of a deal.
Keep this in mind...even IF your plants are touching, all that means is that IF your flowers are getting cross polentated, the bees and such are only going to the most outer flowers. So, if you're going to save seeds, save them from pods on the inside of the plant.
Sure, you can stress yourself out by doing crap like putting different types of baggies, etc., over flowers; supergluing stuff, whatever. Why go through all of that stress when it's not needed? Even of someone did all of that b.s., it doesn't always work anyways.
Here is MY suggestion....save seeds from pods pulled from the middle/inside of the plant. When you save seeds, put seeds from different peppers in different baggies. That way if one doesn't grow true, throw that baggie away. That's IF you want to go through all of the trouble. I personally enjoy crosses.
 
I read that from Butch too but he was just guessing, and to be honest a cross would be so very obvious.
Some people don't care about crosses, others like me spend lots of time and money because it is extremely important to us.
There are tonnes of different techniques for "isolating"and most do not guarantee purity but they certainly up your chances. If you're going to just rely on using pods pulled from the middle/inside of the plant, then I suggest you grow several plants in cluster and not rows, this apparently ups your chances of purity by a quite a bit.
Also peppers can apparently have multiple paternity meaning that within 1 pod some seeds could be true, and some could be cross-pollinated
 
i have been using some "organza bags" like a tea bag with a drawstring

i bought some for $4 at the spanish language indoor swap meet

you could try using these little bags also they are fairly bee proof but wind goes right through them
PICT0040-2-1.jpg


your results may vary
 
I tried to bag individual unopened flowers but found this really fiddly (although nitwits pic looks pretty good) I had much better luck waiting til there were 2 or 3 buds about to break, tagging them and then isolating the whole plant with a very fine net curtain material which I weighed down with stones so nothing could get in, only removing it when i could see the beginning of the fruit forming on all the tagged buds - worked for me.
 
Most pepper plants will freely cross-pollinate with each other. The results of a mild pepper (such as a bell pepper) crossing with a hot pepper often could be a more mild hot pepper. The resulting seeds from these hybrid peppers will be quite variable from hot to mild peppers as well.
Keeping mild and hot peppers, and even different heat levels of hot peppers away from each other helps eliminate the cross-pollination of peppers.
 
I use tulle fabric and make my own "bags" to the size I need for a whole plant. It is cheap at a fabric store. Doesn't block the wind but it will block the pollinating insects.
 
You're gonna get a few different answers in this thread. Some people use little baggies, for example. Personally, I dont use anything. Neither do most. You'd be surprised to find out how many big name seed-sellers don't have any anti-cross methods in place. As well they shouldn't. Let mother nature run her course. Hell, it's how we've gotten most of the great-tasting peppers we know of, like the ButchT.

I would not mind saving some that might have crossed but would rather have at least some of each type that i have a good idea of being what their coming from to plant the year..if i like one type and not another i might not be wanting to be planting extra of a cross when i want so many of a certain type lol

Thanks for the ideas everyone.
 
Back
Top