I’ve changed how I pollinate apples quite a bit. Originally I would cut off all the male parts with tiny scissors. That is insanely slow. I’m pretty sure it is not necessary, so I quit. I also didn’t isolate blossoms for many years. I figured bees would not be interested in the flowers if I pulled off the petals. Then I saw a bee visiting some flowers I had just pollinated, so I began using isolation.
My current method is very simple. I use nylon mesh organza bags, which come in many sizes. I use 7 x 9, 8 x 12, 12 x 14 and 16 x 24. The smallest can hold up to maybe three small apples and the largest can cover a good section of branch. For most people, the large size is much too large. I produce extra seed for sale, so they are great for that. For a small project producing seed for your use only, I’d probably get the 8 x 12, maybe add some 12 x 14 too. Those sizes are not actually the bag size, but more like the fabric cut size. 7 x 9 is fine too, but if you get two or three large fruits in there, they can be too crowded. I buy them in different colors for the different sizes as well, to make them easy to fish out of piles of bags in the field.
Bags are left on for the season and can last a couple of seasons if not in direct strong sun. Full sun here will sometimes destroy them in a season, or at least enough that they will make it just part way through the next season. For tagging I use brightly colored flagging tape, link here on my Amazon Store Page. Use a regular sharpie permanent marker to write on the flagging tape. Do not get suckered into buying the sharpie extreme pens. In my and other’s experience they are worse, not better. Sharpie Extreme, Extremely Lame. You can also write on the apples with regular sharpies when needed.
The bags are applied to the branches before the flowers open. If any flowers are already opened, they are picked off before the bag is applied. When the flowers open, I apply pollen. I now use small micro-brushes made for applying makeup. They are very cheap and can be reused. The ones I buy cost $6.50 for 400 brushes. They are 2mm size. See my Amazon store page for a link to the ones I use.
I use these small brushes, because they waste less pollen. One problem they help solve is cross contamination. Since I’m pollinating blossoms which still have the male parts, pollen from the flowers gets on the brush while pollinating. If I’m double dipping a lot into the pollen packets, I’m putting pollen of the flower being pollinated into the packet contaminating the pollen. If I use the same brush to pollinated another variety with that same pollen, the brush is contaminated. With many hundreds of little brushes, I can use just a little pollen and not be wasting as much when I have to grab a new brush to move to the next variety.
Application can also be done very carefully so as to minimize contamination by carefully trying to touch the female parts only. In some varieties this just doesn’t work as the female parts are buried in the flower. I will still double dip sometimes, but I do it more carefully now, usually by swiping the side of the container lightly to add more pollen to the brush. A vigorous flicking with a finger can knock off a lot of loose pollen before picking up more on the brush if there seems to be a lot of contamination. There is waste of pollen, but that is usually not a problem when the waste is so small on these tiny brushes.
As I go, I toss the used brushes in a container. At the end of the season, I wash them all at once by shaking in a jar of soapy water and dry them out to use again. It is very easy to clean them them, so wash don’t toss.
I pollinate the flowers daily if possible until I feel like the branch has been covered pretty well and most of the flowers have opened. If one is just pollinating for personal use, it does not require that many bags or pollinations. Since I’m trying to produce a lot of seed, I’ll revisit the bags several times to get as much fruit and seed as possible. Results are patchy, so it is definitely best to make too many pollinations, especially if the cross is important to you. In the future, if we are better connected, I would think there will be opportunity to sell and trade extra seed with others.
I also re-pollinate more throughly and frequently if the pollen is old. Timing on pollination does not always work out the way we want it to. Putting pollen of a late blooming variety onto an early blooming one requires using old pollen. At the end of the season, I put my pollen into a jar and freeze it. I don’t know that this method is really any better than room temp storage, maybe it is worse, but I figure it is likely better as long as the pollen is very dry when frozen. When using old pollen, use more and revisit the flowers a couple of times to re-pollinate if possible. Old pollen definitely seems to work, but also seems weaker.
You can of course make a pollination of an early bloomer onto a late bloomer, but sometimes you might want the cross in the other direction. there will also be other cases where you need to use old pollen, like you got pollen from me previously that is not available now, or your bloom season is super early, so you can’t get pollen through the mail in time to pollinate the same year. Some years I just don’t have any pollen at all of some varieties and just have to use old pollen because it is all there is.
To gather pollen, I pick unopened flower buds that look like they will open within a day. The petals are pulled off and the male parts, the anthers, are combed off with a hair comb onto a piece of paper. I put the pollen straight into small origami paper packets to dry and store. The paper seems to dry them at a nice even rate, but quickly enough to use some pollen the next day, or even by the end of the day if collected in the morning, depending on environmental conditions. I have quick dried pollen even in the sun to get pollen fast, but it is not a good idea. It seems to be better to dry the anthers more slowly.
In the past couple of years, I’ve done some control bagging, where I leave a few of the bags of blossoms un-pollinated. Usually they don’t make any fruit, but I have seen in some cases significant fruit and seed production. Information I’ve heard seems to indicate that apples almost never produce viable seed from self pollination. I have germinated some of this seed and it grows fine. I don’t know what is going on. It may be that some pollen is drifting on the wind through the mesh bags. I have also seen bees try to get to the flowers through the bags. They may be getting pollen on the anthers that are pressed against the bag sides. That is very feasible, almost likely. Or, maybe they are self pollinating after all and information about that is incorrect. In some cases I’ll get an isolation control bag with a whole lot of apples and seed, so that makes me think that maybe they are actually self pollinating. Again, these seeds grow.
Whatever the case, it is not a perfect system and nature has a way of getting female organisms pregnant as we all know lol. If one has time and wants the most isolation, I would open the flowers, remove the anthers with tiny sharp scissors, pollinate and then double bag, with one smaller bag, and one larger bag over that. Personally, I think it is okay and even beneficial to have some wild cards in the deck. A little contamination resulting in a seed here and there pollinated with something else might create a happy coincidence. I have apple seedlings which I really like that appear to very likely be accidental pollinations. Dutch Master is one of them The level of work required to insure complete isolation is just prohibitive on any scale, but you can eliminate almost all of it if you are extra careful.
While I am very much about controlling parents in my own breeding work, I do think that blending pollen is a very fun and useful idea. By blending pollen, we can get many different pollen parents in one bag of apples and even in one single apple, where different seeds can be pollinated by different daddies. I sell pollen blends sometimes and it is a good way for a person to get a lot of diversity with just one or two packets. It doesn’t let us know what the parents are for planning in generational work, but that can be okay. I offer targeted blends, like red flesh, savory, late hanging and such, and also collect bits of pollen through the season to put into a season blend that contains a little of everything.
Another benefit to bagging is that I can just tag the branch with one tag and I know what is in the bag. I place the tag so that I know that every blossom below the tag is pollinated by me and covered with the bag. The bags also protect the apples from bugs and birds to an extent. If you don’t have a lot of apples in the orchard, birds and animals will still get into them. But if you have a lot of fruit in the orchard, they will leave them alone, because it is just more work for them. I’ve even seen bears leave bagged apples alone, in preference to apples that are easy to eat off the tree. Once the easy fruits run out though, it’s game over.
When harvesting, I pull the tag off and put it into the bag of apples. I cut around the apple circumference wise, dividing the top from the bottom. Cutting just almost to the core and then twisting works well and no seeds are wasted by being cut with the knife. In most apples the seed cavity is slightly below the center line of the apple, so cut slightly below the equator. I put seeds directly into small paper coin envelopes to dry. I like to dry the seeds before germination now, which is the next step and the next chapter in this story…
