Current green tomato count is 4... three Lemon Drop (on two plants), and one Rideau Sweet. Lots of flowers though, so maybe I'll get a few more varieties.
Some of the original yellow flowers on the tomato plants are starting to turn brown and fall away. They clearly were not pollinated prior to coming in the house. With several more flowers blooming, I did a search for how to hand pollinate. I had looked this up in the spring too, but was not sold on the idea that shaking or flicking the flowers would magically produce a tomato - and the two flowers I tried it with did not produce a tomato. It looks like another option is to use a vibrating toothbrush to mimic the buzzing of a bee to loosen the pollen. Well, those are about $5 each, and if I bought one for the plants, my kids would each want one - and that becomes an expensive pollination project. That got me thinking - what might I have that could mimic a buzzing bee? My cell phone! It has a vibrate option for when I don't want it to ring. So I spent a few minutes today using the vibrate function of my cell phone on each of the tomato flowers. I'm still doubtful, but we'll see. All of the videos I found were people using these methods on gardens outside - where they were likely being pollinated by bees and butterflies and such. Which makes me think it's like saying that if I eat raisins every day, it will eventually rain. Well, unless I live in a desert, it will rain eventually - regardless of if I eat raisins every day. I guess time will tell. Being indoors, there are no pollinators so if they produce then I know it was from this cell phone vibration experiment.
Current green tomato count is 4... three Lemon Drop (on two plants), and one Rideau Sweet. Lots of flowers though, so maybe I'll get a few more varieties.
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