Have an indoor garden? You may need to manually pollinate your plants

In an indoor garden your plants need pollination to occur and it may mean artificial pollination. Outside, in the open, this is generally not a problem but indoors or in an enclosed structure you may be forced to manually intervene in order to get vegetables.

Let's start with types of pollination. There are 4 types of plant pollination: plants needing pollen from different plants, plants that pollinate themselves, plants that can self-pollinate and receive pollen from other plants through wind and insects and, finally, those with male and female plants or flowers.

Pole beans, tomatoes and certain varieties of peas are some examples of plants that will pollinate themselves, while most will need wind or insects meaning manual intervention.

A garden that is indoors will not generally get wind or pollinating insects so you will need to do some manual pollination. I buy packages of inexpensive, small paint brushes used by children.

These are perfect for lightly rubbing the flowers to get pollen and transferring it to another flower to pollinate. This method does work especially when combined with lightly shaking the plants and turning a fan on them now and then.

For plants with male and female plants or flowers like some cucumbers and squash, read how to identify the male flowers or plants and use the 'paintbrush' technique on them as well. Even self-pollinators like tomatoes will benefit from a light shaking or a fan blowing on them.

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