March 3, 2005
SHAKE WHAT YOUR MOMMA GAVE YA: HOW TO POLLINATE INDOOR CHILE PLANTS
The process of pollination is pretty straightforward: Anthers in a chile flower create a fine, yellow dust called pollen. Stigmas in the same flower are waiting to receive pollen. When pollen (from the same plant or airborn from another plant) hits the stigma, the pollen works its way down down the inside of the stigma to fertilize an ovule, and a chile pepper is born. If your dad's lecture about the "bird and the bees" back in the day REALLY DID include discussion of birds and bees, then you already know this.
The challenge to creating a chile yield with indoor plants is pollination, pure and simple. Specifically, pollination that normally occurs outdoors due to wind and bees doesn't occur indoors because... well... there's no wind or bees indoors.
So how can you manage to still grow some chiles indoors, especially during winter?
The first step is to select a variety of chile that pollinates easily, simply because pollination indoors requires manual intervention. I currently have two varieties in the house that fit the "easy pollination" bill. My firecracker pequin plant has yielded literally hundreds of chiles this winter. And the tazmanian habanero, while not yielding hundreds, has been a consistent producer and always has five or six ripe chiles ready to pluck whenever I'm cooking a recipe I want to use them in. On the other hand, the yellow jellybean plant that was a huge producer for me over the summer has not produced a single chile since I brought it indoors.
In my experience, chile plants that produce flowers which stay in bloom longer and/or have larger blooms tend to pollinate more easily indoors. Why? Because the blooms will remain in a "pollinate-able" state long enough for me to manually intervene. Firecrackers pequin flowers seem to stick around for three or four days. Same with the tazmanian habaneros. My yellow jellybean plant, on the other hand, is covered with dozens and dozens of extremely tiny blooms on any given day, yet these flowers rarely seem to last less than a day before falling off. I'll come home from work and this plant looks like it's SHEDDING! Yet the plant is healthy and continues to grow and pop out flowers that fall off because they didn't pollinate immediately.
With the right variety of chile plants in the house, the next step is to manually attempt to pollinate the plant. Keep your eye on the prize: "pollen into stigma". There's two easy ways to get this done: (1) Shake the plant. Seriously. Every morning while I'm wandering around the house with my coffee trying to wake up, I'll walk up the each of my chile plants, grab it by the base of the trunk, and give it a gentle shake. This winter, this approach has worked pretty well for me. If this isn't working, then try (2) a Q-Tip. Just take a Q-Tip swab and gently swirl it around inside each flower. Sounds like a lot of work, but honestly you can do an entire blooming chile plant in less than a minute. No need to linger, just gently swirl the Q-Tip around inside each flower for a second or two, then move on to the next one.
And that's all there is to it, folks...
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