Hey everybody. Started a seed from a store-bought green bell pepper. Threw it in the flowering area and it's starting to flower. This is the first pepper plant I've grown, so I'm coming to GC for advice. This is the first flower to open (there's probably 20 of them), and I'm wondering if I need to pollinate them or anything to get ma peppers. Thanks in advance for the advice!
That is seriously one healthy looking pepper! I assume your grow room/house isn't full of bees, so you'll defninitely need to crosspolinate the flowers A small soft paintbrush does nicely, just 'dab' at each flower for a a second or two, then move onto the next flower. This can be quite time consuming, so obviously the better solution is to contact an Apiarist and organise a bee swarm for your house
I agree, get the bees. Then take pics. Nice looking pepper plant Nugs I vegged one indoors at the beginning of the year but I put her outside to finish so I can't give any advice on flowering. Get the bees.
Exactly what I wanted to hear. so I guess I just gotta wait for some more flowers to open. Shouldn't be long. Thanks! I'm on it. ... should I get the african ones? I hear they're organized, and I'm all about efficiency.
It doesn't matter what nationalitity the bees are, just make sure they're happy bees, depressed bees aren't very productive [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfsaJKDQNis]YouTube - Puppy Hates Bee Costume[/ame]
very cool nugs! i always thought the seeds from store bought veggies were no good.. very interesting man
Yeah, I'm kinda wondering what kinda peppers I'm gonna get. Wonder if it will look and taste the same as the pepper I got it from? Ahh, learning. I'm pretty surprised with how darn healthy it is, as it's had nothing more than minimal nutes (we're talking less than 100 ppm), and ambient lighting until just recently. You guys think I should bump up the nutes a tiny bit now that it's flowering?
4 more flowers opened up, so I did my best bee impression. Although I ran out of breath with all that buzzing, I think I've sucuessfully pollenated all the flowers. Can't wait for more to open.
seein' how this is working out, I think i'm gonna start growin all kinds of stuff on the side. Who knows, maybe we'll take the longest bean comp indoors.
I don't have much spare space But I like the idea of indoor mega beans Looky at the ickle pepper! Great bee work dude. Don't sting anything or you'll die.
Trust me, when I've got 48" mega-beans, you'll be settin' up another grow tent. I gotta find me some of those big beans that unoit got. *edit* a bean-tent, if you will.
Awesome looking grow, good luck on some good pepps. i just started some jalapeno plants so i hope i can get them lookin like yours.
Not sure if someone answered this already but yeah you do need to pollinate it to get viable peppers. I have been growing outdoor peppers for years and originally thought that if the peppers grew seeds then they would autimatically grow, not the case I guess. For a couple years I could not figure out why my seeds from the previous growing season would not germinate. So I researched and found out that the pepper plants have male and female flowers that need to be pollinated. A lot like Zuchini flowers, they look a lot alike but subtle differences. If you look at them closely you can tell which ones are male and which ones are female. In all honesty the male flowers have a "penis" shaped appendage coming out of the flower and the female has a Vulva. Weird but true. I hand pollinated them at first but after a while I grew other plants to attract bees which ended up doing the job for me. But I guess since you are doing this hydro then you need to hand pollinate them. Of course you may only have the male/ or female of the species so if you are only growing 1 plant it is impossible for it to pollinate itself. Other plants like tomato's are self pollinating though.