seeds On seed saving/cross pollination

Do you separate your varieties by a certain distance?  Do you have other plants between your peppers?  Do you worry about it that much?
 
Sorry for all the questions, I get bored at work and overthink things :p
 
That depends upon what you are raising your peppers.  If you are looking for pure strain seeds, then you really need complete isolation.  If you have neighbors growing peppers, even then there's a possibility of a cross.
 
It's true. What are you growing for? If you are growing just to get the peppers then i wouldn't worry too much about it. If you plan on selling seeds then thats when it matters.

I'm gonna have one variety of each plant I grow in a pot and i'm gonna spread them out over the property and some in other places. That way I can harvest some pure seeds. Gonna try that this year. See how it works
 
Wouldn't be selling anything, but would give the seeds away/trade them if people wanted them, you know?  I know isolation would be best, but I also know a lot of people trade seeds :D
 
Oh, and no worry of neighbors.  I think the closest people are about 1/4 mile away.
 
Pepperjack91 said:
How much room do you have?
 
Our facility is a little over 4 acres, but much of it is in use by horses.  :D
 
I'm only planning on doing a couple of plants per variety, so I could probably sufficiently separate them, but there's no telling what the bees and such will do.  Much of our land is dirt and gravel, so anything that flowers is kinda like a beacon.  I guess at that point you'd invoke the divine-intervention clause if you had any cross pollination going on, though, huh?
 
Bag a branch in very fine material to keep the bees out.
Not 100%, but works for me.


And then the flowers on that branch basically self-pollinate and you use those pods for seeds, that makes sense. :)
 
Horses?  Let their manure age about six months, then you'll have a perfect bedding, feed-source for raising red worms.  And in-turn the worms will give you one of the best soil amendments that you can find.  You can also take the worm castings and make aerated worm castings tea.
 
If your plants are in pots, you can bring them inside until newly opened flowers set fruit. If you are going to do bagging, do it when temperatures are relatively low as the bags will often cause the flowers to drop if it gets too hot.
 
I just let mine cross pollinate I've had some pretty cool surprises this year! And I just buy new seeds for varieties I really want to grow!
 
I'll probably try the bagging thing. That sounds like a good, easy way to go. If I keep them in containers, though, I might just move them around, too. Luckily I have quite some time to make myself crazy over the minutia :D
 
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