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Let's talk about isolation.

Jamison said:
Awesome updates on this Browning!  Hope it stays on and doesn't fall off.  Gonna try this for sure.
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Thank you.  I gave it a few flicks to see if it would fly off or not and it didn't so my fingers are crossed.  It seems very stout so I am hoping that's a great sign.  In the meantime I am bringing in all of my potted plants today and gluing a bunch of just about ready to open flowers.  I am trying to locate a small paintbrush now to try to paint some glue on as well as applying it straight from the bottle.  I noticed it's easy to apply too much from the bottle and gravity tends to gob it all up on the bottom of the flower, which might have been my issue with the reaper pod that didn't seal completely.  Hoping a brush will eliminate this and let me apply an even coat that dries faster and seals it up better.  So far my 3 year old hasn't told me where he hid them at lol
degenerate said:
This is the only isolation method I've used, and had fairly good success. I'd say about 25% of the pollinated/sealed flowers dropped, but most would fruit for me.
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If you have any tips you've learned along the way I would love to hear them.
 
Have you had any instances where seed you saved from this method have not grown true?
 
Kids will be kids!  I love this thread and am anxiously awaiting your results.  To me it seems as if the glue would be the best method.  I used Tulle bags last year and it wasn't very easy to get the flowers pollinated inside the bags.  And besides that it seems likely for other pollen to get through the holes in the fabric especially if your plants are really close together.   
 
Browning said:
Have you had any instances where seed you saved from this method have not grown true?
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Jamison said:
And besides that it seems likely for other pollen to get through the holes in the fabric especially if your plants are really close together.   
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Exactly what I was wondering. Capsicum pollen is around 25 microns. If you had a material with 1mm holes, the little dot below would represent a grain of pollen. If my reckoning is correct.
 
 
pollen.jpg

 
Layering tulle or something similar must give a pretty decent barrier, I'd be interested to read replies to Brownings question. There are filter socks down to 5 microns, but they're pretty much solid fabric and I wonder how the plant would suffer...?
 
When I make bags from tulle I usually double layer it just as an added precaution. I walk by and tap/shake the covered plants a bit every morning when I check on them and have never had a problem with pollination inside the bags. The times I tried the elmers glue method I would pour some into a small bottle cap and lightly dip the closed flowers into the glue. Kinda like dipping strawberries in chocolate, wiping the excess glue against the side of the cap. It worked for me just not very well, I hope it does work great for you. Over the course of 3 months I probably glued close to a couple hundred flowers and had only maybe 30% set compared to 75% or more with tulle bags. I also tried a few different types of glue but the elmers seemed to work the best when it worked. Maybe I'll try again one of these days and see what happens but I'm pretty satisfied with the double layered tulle bags. The seeds from the bag isolation always seem to grow true and once the bags are made I can reuse them year after year after a quick wash in a bucket of soapy water. I hope you have much better success with the glue method than I did.
 
Jamison said:
Kids will be kids!  I love this thread and am anxiously awaiting your results.  To me it seems as if the glue would be the best method.  I used Tulle bags last year and it wasn't very easy to get the flowers pollinated inside the bags.  And besides that it seems likely for other pollen to get through the holes in the fabric especially if your plants are really close together.   
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Thank you very much.  Yes, and this boy of mine is fantastic at hiding things.  In fact, I still haven't found one lol. 
 
If you have any suggestions or something you would like for me to try while doing this please let me know and I will try to give it a shot.  I want this to work badly.   Any idea on if it's going to fall off, when it will do so?  Like if I wake up tomorrow and it's still there, can I call it a win?  :)
 
It's now 10pm and I just took this before I started typing this.
 
 
dBIalGn.jpg

miguelovic said:
 
 
Exactly what I was wondering. Capsicum pollen is around 25 microns. If you had a material with 1mm holes, the little dot below would represent a grain of pollen. If my reckoning is correct.
 
 
pollen.jpg

 
Layering tulle or something similar must give a pretty decent barrier, I'd be interested to read replies to Brownings question. There are filter socks down to 5 microns, but they're pretty much solid fabric and I wonder how the plant would suffer...?
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Pretty interesting about the sizes. 
 
Scorched said:
When I make bags from tulle I usually double layer it just as an added precaution. I walk by and tap/shake the covered plants a bit every morning when I check on them and have never had a problem with pollination inside the bags. The times I tried the elmers glue method I would pour some into a small bottle cap and lightly dip the closed flowers into the glue. Kinda like dipping strawberries in chocolate, wiping the excess glue against the side of the cap. It worked for me just not very well, I hope it does work great for you. Over the course of 3 months I probably glued close to a couple hundred flowers and had only maybe 30% set compared to 75% or more with tulle bags. I also tried a few different types of glue but the elmers seemed to work the best when it worked. Maybe I'll try again one of these days and see what happens but I'm pretty satisfied with the double layered tulle bags. The seeds from the bag isolation always seem to grow true and once the bags are made I can reuse them year after year after a quick wash in a bucket of soapy water. I hope you have much better success with the glue method than I did.
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Thank you for that.  When you were gluing, were you only getting the glue on the tip?  Since the gap on the reaper I have been trying to get the majority of the flower covered in glue without getting any of the green(Not sure if this has a diofferent name or it the whole stem is considered the calyx?) but on a few I got some glue on, and I am curious how that work if the flower can't be pushed off right away.  
 
Also, I glued some flowers that aren't quite ready to open and hope to watch how they react to the glue.  Thinking maybe for this to work right, the flower literally needs to be at that point where it's ready to open within hours, or the next day, and that doing too small of flowers might keep it from forming right, resulting in it getting dropped before pollination can even take place.  I hope this makes sense?  If myn therory is correct, this could help us lower that failure rate. 
Using this yellow peter plant as an example:
 
This flower should be open tomorrow. 
9CvtBOR.jpg

 
 
Where this one still has a few days.
mL3L1V3.jpg
 
 
 
If it were daylight I could get better examples.  I am going to glue both now and tag them A and B.  A will be the more mature flower and B the younger one.  Am I crazy or does that theory make sense?  :)
 
Random thought: Do you tap them or such to move the pollen around?
 
Seems like gold even at say 50-75%. I drop a shit-ton of flowers already, a few more won't hurt if I get solid isolation XD
 
I have when taking the pictures(light flicks on the flower).  I haven't the others though.  I'll know if it helps on the reapers for sure as I've glued quite a bit now on a couple of them.  Haven't touched the one plant since and haven't even checked it.
 
So, are peppers wind pollinated like corn? Or insect pollinated like almonds? If wind, then the fabric to isolate the flowers would need to be fine indeed. If insect, then the fabric needs to keep the insects out and the plants should be jostled to knock the pollen in to/on to the stigma.
 
Also worth asking, is the stigma enclosed by the stamens, or does it protrude past them? If the former, then cross pollination is harder to acheive, if the later, then very easy. From the picture above, it looks like the stigma is not inclosed.
 
Isolation distances, well, most of the numbers you see are for commercial operations growing acres of a plant. When there are that many growing, then greater distances are needed for isolation. In the hobbyist's case, less distance will usually be fine. Neighbor's, friends, co-workers, lend me your yards, for when you really want to isolate a plant.
 
Corn, being wind pollinated has quite the distance. Here in the Willamette Valley so much sweet corn is grown and its pollen can travel up to 5 miles by wind, the chance of claiming 'pure' home saved seed is hard to make, unless the corn tassels to harvest the pollen from and the corn ears are covered with paper bags early enough. And then other steps taken. I asked a hippy plant breeder about this and he said why bother? You might get something interesting from the cross, so who really cares? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, something worth considering.
 
Orekoc said:
Isolation distances, well, most of the numbers you see are for commercial operations growing acres of a plant. When there are that many growing, then greater distances are needed for isolation. In the hobbyist's case, less distance will usually be fine. Neighbor's, friends, co-workers, lend me your yards, for when you really want to isolate a plant.
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Seems like a great idea, a few peppers in trade would probably convince many a gardner.
 
Orekoc said:
So, are peppers wind pollinated like corn? Or insect pollinated like almonds? If wind, then the fabric to isolate the flowers would need to be fine indeed. If insect, then the fabric needs to keep the insects out and the plants should be jostled to knock the pollen in to/on to the stigma.
 
Also worth asking, is the stigma enclosed by the stamens, or does it protrude past them? If the former, then cross pollination is harder to acheive, if the later, then very easy. From the picture above, it looks like the stigma is not inclosed.
 
Isolation distances, well, most of the numbers you see are for commercial operations growing acres of a plant. When there are that many growing, then greater distances are needed for isolation. In the hobbyist's case, less distance will usually be fine. Neighbor's, friends, co-workers, lend me your yards, for when you really want to isolate a plant.
 
Corn, being wind pollinated has quite the distance. Here in the Willamette Valley so much sweet corn is grown and its pollen can travel up to 5 miles by wind, the chance of claiming 'pure' home saved seed is hard to make, unless the corn tassels to harvest the pollen from and the corn ears are covered with paper bags early enough. And then other steps taken. I asked a hippy plant breeder about this and he said why bother? You might get something interesting from the cross, so who really cares? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, something worth considering.
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They're self pollinating, so a little wind or a shake or two is all they need.  When it's ready to accept pollen, the stamens open up and spread out a bit.  Once pollination has taken place, the petals  kind of droop if you will, then fall off.  The stigma will often stick around for a few days even though pollination has occured.  In fact, I am not sure, but I believe this is how some peppers get their tails?  Hoping some one can chime in on that one.
 
 
However, over the last few days I am convinced gluing the flower shut worked in this particular case.  I gave it some flicks while it was glued shut, plus we had some windy days.  Then the flower dropped and the formed pod was clearly visible.  The last two days the pod has been growing and as seen in the following picture, the stigma dropped some time throughout the night.  I would say success.  :)
YCGESxE.jpg

LeagBZn.jpg

 
I have some more to glue up today and will post pics of a couple of those, and on those couple of glued flowers I will also bag them to check progress against the flower I have been posting here. 
 
 
I would love to see some of you guys give this a go as well and take part in this thread with your photos and progress. 
 
Bad news on the A and B test.  Dog knocked the plant off the deck and some of the plant broke off, which including that branch.  I'll have to try that theory again on another.
 
Quick update:
 
Rain is your enemy.  We had a nice rain and wind storm last night and I just went out and removed a bunch of bread ties from open flowers.  The rain, as I assumed it would, turned the glue back into a liquid and released the flower from its grip, thus allowing them to open which defeated the purpose.  Not all were completely open, but even the ones slightly opened were removed.  No big deal, I've still been having quite a bit of success so far in my short time experimenting with it.  I have glued up quite a bit of flowers since starting this thread and I have only found about a half dozen of dropped flowers with bread ties on them.  I've got a bunch out there podded up with ties on them so the drops have been minimal. 
 
I am going to find some rubber cement and experiment with it, but I have my doubts about it working as well because of the chemical compound in which it is made?  It wouldn't break down in water though, right?  We'll see how that goes soon.

Had I not been checking them often and watching like a hawk, I never would have known.
 
Browning,  I went out and glued a few flowers the other day on a MoA plant.  Will update soon.  So far so good!
 
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