Another great video Gray... I used to use a 16 ounce plastic cup to collect pollen, but the static charge would cause the pollen to stick to the sides when moist...I then went to glass but had a hard time finding a jar with a wide enough opening to get inside and collect all the pollen... So I found an old steel metal chrome plated bowl ...it worked pretty good especially sticking to the magnet on my outside frig for a storage place, but I think it still held a slight static electrical charge... then I discovered my local Smart and Final had the same size stainless steel bowls. It’s now my go to pollen collecting bowl... then I transfer the pollen into a glass jar and store in my frig after I let it dry a bit... This video answers so many questions ... thanks again...
Hi Gray martin .I am one of your many subscribers and always enjoy watching your videos, Would like to ask you a question, Because all my dragon fruit need hand pollinating ,and are very much time consuming, Is it Ok to collect the pollins on the night the flowers have opened and pollinate them in afternoon of the next day. Thank you and God Bless.
Hey James. Sorry always busy but try to answer all questions. Collecting pollen actually anytime just before the flower opens sometimes even slightly forcing the pedals away petals. So I collect late late afternoon too early evening or anytime during the night. Then I like to use the pollen the following morning on the flowers that need to be hand pollinated. So I've developed a routine. Collect pollen late late in the day. Pollinate first thing early the next morning. Too late in the next day the flowers are closing and even the pistol can be drying.
Great question! So when the flowering is heavy this van be a big problem. So I tackle one side of a row at a time. I pollinate everything facing from the middle and those near the middle, you know the inside middle, but if those flowers are facing the other direction I get them when I do the other side... Do a few like this and you get the hang of it quick, but you have to be paying attention all the time... A few hours and your exhausted. After a few years of this and it can become challenging work as you are always worried about enough pollen to get through the many open flowers...
Really Joe there is not much more to show... that I have not already shown... These small hand-held rechargeable vacuums are cheap ($25 at Target)... You collect pollen before bees harvest it... sometimes that means before the flower opens or often at night after the flower opens. You then collect the pollen from the machine (select the model of vacuum that will allow for easy collection! Some more expensive models are very difficult to collect the pollen-dust!). I mostly collect a mix of pollen! So if I need pollen for plant 'A' I will collect from 'B', Maybe 'C', and 'D', and maybe even from 'A' . This mix of pollen will allow me to use it for all my flowers!
I do the Pollination at night and I use the vacuum to collect the pollen but the problem I find out the bees they take all the pollen from the stigma because there is no pollination left after I vacuum everything
You know I find that if you collect the pollen very late in the day often forcing the flower a little that you can use this same pollen the next morning before 9am with very high success. This is how we do it commercially.
Sorry for delay. Unimportant as you will look for a relatively inexpensive version, any make, that allows you to get pollen out easily. Often the fancy types have fancy filters that make pollen collection difficult. Ask to open the box. Shouldn't be more than $30
The boric acid formula I use is 3 tbl boric acid powder 3 cups sugar to each gallon of water...we make feeding stations every 50 feet or so... it's organic and effective at radically reducing the problem. I replace formula 2=3 times every week then repeat about every six weeks through summer
Tbl means tablespoon. So for each gallon of water 3 tbl boric acid powder and 3 cups sugar. Mostly inexpensive. The boric acid goes back to queen and colony killed. This sugar solution goes bad in a week so I make a batch. Use some and refrigerate the rest, then refill after a week and in two weeks you will see very few ants!
The fresher the better... I have access to fresh pollen so we collect daily but years ago I would keep it refrigerated up to 5 days... There are videos of people storing it longer... they divide into smaller amounts and use anti-dessicant bags... air is the degrading agent...
That's right each flower one night persisting into the next morning, but not all flowers open the same night. Most varieties flower over a period of 4-5 nights.
The question about which varieties are the best pollinators is again complicated. Mostly your selection is based on timing. Many of the hybrids that require pollen do not sequence with white flesh varieties. Oh sometimes they do because as you know dragon fruit has waves of flowering during the summer season. So often times for the hybrids you need other hybrids. There are a few varieties that do not produce much pollen, or even possibly weak pollen. Physical Graffiti comes to mind but most all the others produce very viable pollen.
Or you could let the bees do the work they do best and cross pollinate your flowers. Fancy closing them off and therefore stopping mother nature in action!
Sorry for the delay! Yes, we want and need the bees. But many of the red flesh varieties are not self fertile. This means that the flower of these varieties requires pollen from a different variety. Now this would be no problem if the two different varieties were close to one another and flowered at the same time. But this is often NOT the case. So, we have to search for different varieties in our plot, collect the pollen and apply it by hand. This guarantees fruit set. And often large fruit. Otherwise I am just hoping bees will move from one part of the orchard to another--and from experience this does not happen well...
