When to start hand-pollinating

D

dragon49

I'm hand-pollinating an indoor pepper plant.  Do I need to wait until the flowers are 100% open before I start touching them, or can I start as soon as they start to open?  As an example, look at this flower.  Is it ready to be pollinated, or does it need to open up more?
 
 
 
You need pollen to pollinate. Whether the flowers are open or not is not important, as long as you have some pollen. By that line of thought, if you do have an open flower near by that is producing pollen (look at the stamens), then use a soft brush or qtip to move it from that flower to other open flowers. You can also open other flowers that are on the verge of opening by using tweezers, and then using collected pollen (from your brush or qtip) on them.
 
What filmost said, though hand pollinating shouldn't even be necessary unless cross breeding as peppers are self pollinating. A fan gently blowing on them should get the job done or gently shaking them every once in a while. 
 
I like to hand pollinate too, but as long as there is polen on the stamens you are good to go. It happens that a flower opens and only gets polen a day after opening
 
yes you can, but watch out so the pollen of the original plant does not fall on the stamen, no point in crossing then 
 
can you cross pollinate with a qtip? anyway it wouldnt be 100% success


yes you can cross pollinate with a qtip. your chance of success goes up if the two varieties are known to be able to cross, and you've emasculated the mother flower so that it doesn't self pollinate. in addition isolating said flower would also help.
 
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