Hi Everyone. I wanted to report on the results of my first attempt to pollinate my pomegranates by hand. I posted something about this on another thread - but thought it got lost in the shuffle - and I wanted to share it where more people might see it.
The last few years have seen a reduction in fruit set for my pomegranates. Not all varieties produce fruit prolifically - and some may just be too young to do so. And who knows why some years I end up with more pollinated blossoms than other years??? So . . . I thought Iâd try giving them a hand, by pollinating the blossoms, myself.
It was very simple to do - and I believe the results are rather stunning!
I especially concentrated on my Granadas and a couple other varieties, because they were more dependable to carry fruit to ripen successfully. My little granddaughter helped. She did the lower branches and I did the higher ones. We used little artistsâ paintbrushes and just went from flower to flower, spreading pollen.
The result (without actually counting developing fruit) was an increase of approximately 2/3.
In other words . . . last year my larger Granada had about 30 pomegranates developing . . .
and this year - close to 100!
More fruit might translate to more fungus, unfortunately . . . but also may give a larger amount of âcleanâ fruit. Weâll see. All I know is that I am delighted to see how easy it is to increase the number of developing fruit . . . And I sure wish Iâd tried to hand-pollinate years ago!
I will post some additional pics once the fruit starts to color up. Right now most of it is green . . . and doesnât show up well against the green foliage.
There may be more - but it 's like âWhereâs Waldoâ . . . and I couldnât spot them in the photo!
Great post thanks for starting this topic. I have a Santa Rosa plum that has bloomed the last two years and has not made a plum. I know others have reported this difficulty so I was wondering if some sort of hand pollination might help I had a methley plum planted right next to it, but it always bloomed earlier in the Santa Rosa. My methley is gone now got crushed during the tornado that I had . Santa Rosa is five years old, so I really donât have much hope for it unless I can do some sort of hand pollination.
@Bdav I have the same problem with my Santa Rosa. Itâs about 10 years old (or more) and has only had a handful of plums in its entire life. I thought that perhaps its blossoms are fragile and easily freeze? But, who knows? The Toka next to it had the same problem until this year. It is covered with tiny plums at the moment . . . which I doubt will mature. Try grafting some other varieties to your Santa Rosa. Shiro is one that âboosts the egoâ after fruit failure! LOL It grows quickly and produces like mad. There must be others that will do well on your Santa Rosa. And in the meantime, while you wait for a Santa Rosa plum . . . youâll have others, hopefully.
P.S. - I have never tried pollinating anything other that the poms and my stubborn PawPaws.
But, itâs worth a try.
i may try this on some my trees . despite them being loaded this spring with blooms, they didnt set much fruit. im thinking i may have too many fruit trees together that bloom at the same time, that the pollinators cant keep up. i have plenty of compatable trees to cross pollinate so im thinking it could be not enough pollinators to get the job done.
Thatâs wonderful, but thatâs not an increase by 2/3 which would be 50 total.
Thatâs more than 3X as many!
For example: you invest $100, if you lose half, now you have $50, then if you get half again (+50%), you have $75.
But if you lost half, then doubled your money youâd be back to your original investment, $100 or whatever it was in real life.
But on a botanical side, how did you do it?
Bagging and brushing?
Or were you just brushing on pollen without any interest in making specific crosses?
Itâs blossoms may be fragile but Japanese plums are tough!
I bought 4 leafing out from Alabama, but some in a market in the southern border of North Carolina, I drove them back to upstate New York and planted them leafing out in a warm spell, the in late APRIL the thermometer hit -20F /-31c with them leafed out or buds open, they all survived it, I donât think they even dropped any leaves.
I remember that was actually the coldest part of the winter, so yes I think so, but maybe Iâve been telling the story in Celsius so long it could have been a warm winter and only -20c /-4F thatâs probably more like it.
@Trav Hey, thanks for the math/statistics lesson. Not my strong point.
As to how I pollinated the pomegranate trees by hand . . .
Very scientific and complicated. I took a soft paint brush and went from blossom to blossom - softly brushing pollen from one flower to the next. I just wanted more of the blossoms to develop into fruit. I was not paying attention to moving the pollen from one variety to the next, although as I moved through the orchard - that was bound to happen.
Hand-pollination may not help on some types of fruit trees. Santa Rosa plum just doesnât produce much, if any, fruit in some locations. I have one that I hand-pollinated from several other Oriental plums a few times, but it didnât make any difference. The only times that I have gotten a decent crop were unusual springs when, after a delay in blooming due to cold weather, the weather suddenly warmed and stayed relatively warm and dry during blooming and for a while thereafter.
It is making plenty of blooms theyâre supposed to be self fertile, but obviously from what I heard thatâs not really true.
I know nothing about grafting. But Iâm wondering if maybe I could take and get some methley plum scions and get some plums that way. I had five plum trees before the tornado in March of this year now the only one left is Santa Rosa, which is totally worthless. the methley was reliable and a really good producer. Probably going to plant two more methley plums in the November but going to take a few years to start producing again .
