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Isolation Ideas

Hey,
I plan on growing some plants in my basement for the winter and was'ted some Isolation ideas If I wanted to grow more then one type. Originally I was just going to group 6-9 of the same plants but would really like to grow 3-4 different varities that I can save seeds from for the summer. So anyone that has experience in this it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--James
 
How far do you think the plants have to be? I was thinking that the fan would cross pollinate the plants if close enough together.
 
As far as I know, chiles are rarely pollinated by wind/air. They are inbreeders and do not shoot pollen into the air for pollination like outbreeder type plants
 
I do not think that air transportation of pollen is a problem. All of my peppers are in BIG natural wind and 24 inches from other varieties of peppers and I have not observed any cross fertilization. As a matter of fact there are bumble bees in my peppers flowers and it seems that they are not able to cross pollinate the peppers. It would seem that peppers pollinate themselves Very Quickly so I would say no problem in the basement.
 
Simple:


desert-island.jpg
 
I've had really good luck doing the following:

- Grow tent with several varieties of superhots

- Choose the ones I want to isolate (Assuming single plants)

- Pluck/pull/cut off ALL flowers from other pepper plants in the tent

- Hand pollinate with a lightly moist Q-tip


Works everytime!

(Or you can propagate via tissue culture and avoid germination time altogether :-)
 
As far as I know, chiles are rarely pollinated by wind/air. They are inbreeders and do not shoot pollen into the air for pollination like outbreeder type plants

Just to confirm what you are saying, I was talking to a botanist that studies chiles at the college I graduated from (where I grow most of my plants now) and he told me the wind isn't a problem. He pointed out that it's the ants that I gotta worry about the most (I have lots of ants on my plants). Ants like to drink the nectar in the flowers and other bugs do too. I was asking his advice on isolation and crossbreeding. The best idea seemed to be using mosquito netting that has small holes and just cover the plants with it. You can cover the whole plant in it. Another thing you can do is use nylons to cover up flowers before they start pollinating (this is what I'm doing since I was too lazy to go searching for mosquito netting).

There are certain varieties that are not cultivated, to my knowledge, that require a population in order to breed. These are the sorts of chiles that would spreed pollen around. However, they will not crossbreed with the cultivated chiles we typically grow (I'm pretty sure these sorts have a different number of chromosomes). The botanist has these types of species (ones that require more than one plant or a population) in our greenhouse. He has to hand pollinate them because they will not pollinate themselves indoors. And those are the sort that actually spread pollen around. The ones we deal with are self-pollinating. You will not have to worry about isolation indoors.

I've had really good luck doing the following:

- Grow tent with several varieties of superhots

- Choose the ones I want to isolate (Assuming single plants)

- Pluck/pull/cut off ALL flowers from other pepper plants in the tent

- Hand pollinate with a lightly moist Q-tip


Works everytime!

(Or you can propagate via tissue culture and avoid germination time altogether :-)

Peppers are a little tough to do tissue culture with. The only way I know how to do it is by using the cotyledons for propagation. I've come to the conclusion that it's easier to just germinate since this requires you to germinate and then do tissue culture, lol. If anyone knows another part of the plant that will work, let me know!
 
"Peppers are a little tough to do tissue culture with. The only way I know how to do it is by using the cotyledons for propagation."

I start by pulling a couple shoots and start to clone them "old school" style. When undifferentiated cell growth occurs, I slice that off and propagate that. After a while I have large callous cell masses that are divided and then I can start treating them to make shoots n' roots.
 
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