Howdy ! im a bit new to apartment gardening and im currently having a problem with hornets wanting to build a nest on my balcony, i’ve tried multiple go away methods and they keep coming back. So i bought a magnetic bug net one usually used for balcony or garage doors but was wondering if i put it up will that stop all pollinators from giving me fruits ? if so should i just get more tomato plants because currently its just the one plant on my balcony 😅
by Disastrous_Frame_297
6 Comments
You can manually pollinate with a small paint brush. That’s what I do to my indoor tomatoes.
I do it manually with a small soft make-up brush. Its worked really well too. Most of my flowers have been successfully pollinated and I’m starting to harvest my cherry tomatoes now.
Tomatoes don’t need pollinators. They have perfect flowers which will pollinate themselves when shaken by the wind.
Just give the plant a gentle shake if you are worried. That’s what i did with all of mine
Tomato flowers are self fertilizing. Temperature affects the stickiness of the pollen, which affects this. Below 18°C and the pollen is too dry and over 32 °C makes it too sticky. If you want to help pollination you can shake or tap the plant. I briefly touch an old electric toothbrush onto the flower stalks to vibrate them help transfer the pollen.
Just shake around the flowers, or if you really wanna be extra, touch an electric toothbrush to the stem of flowers to shake the pollen around in there. No bugs needed for tomatoes, just gotta get the pollen to the pistils all contained within each individual glower on their own.