Sachin

Growing your own fruit is exciting, but being able to crossbreed certain breeds makes it especially interesting. Whether you want to create a new fruit plant or fruit tree, it can be a thrilling experience to pick your new hybrid fruit and enjoy it or share it with friends. It may sound like an in-depth science experiment, but crossbreeding fruit can be done at home easily, just by following a few simple steps. With the help of a few tools and these instructions, you can be on your way to creating unique breeds of fruit in your home.

Before you start, there are a few tools and items that you will need to have on hand. You will need two flowering fruit plants to collect the pollen, and at least two cotton swabs to collect it. Seedling trays, new soil mix, plastic wrap, water, pots, and grow lights are some of the other things that will help you successfully crossbreed a fruit plant or tree.

Keep in mind that this is a process that happens over time, so having a notebook to jot things down as you do them might be a good idea, as well.

1. The first thing to do is to think about what kind of fruit you want to create. Keep in mind that the closer related the two fruits are, the easier it will be to crossbreed them. This is especially true for berry plants and citrus trees, which is why those are a great place to start if you have never done this before. Along with this you will need to decide what time of year is the best to do your planting, because weather conditions and temperature variables can make a difference in your success of growing your fruit.

2. Next you are going to want to collect a lot of pollen from each fruit with the help of a cotton swab. It is important to mark which swab is used on the different plants so that you can tell them apart when needed. Then take one swab per plant and collect pollen off the outside of the anthers on each flower. The anthers are the male part of the plant that has balls of pollen on them.

3. Then you are going to swab those pollen samples onto the stigma of your base plant. The base plant is the one in which you are altering, and the stigma is the female part of it.

4. Over the next few months make sure that the plant is properly cared for. It is vital to make sure that it gets plenty of sun, water, and general health care to ensure that your crossbreeding procedure was successful. When your fruit begins to grow, it is important that immature fruit is never picked, because overpicking can reduce the chances of good results from the overall crossbreeding experience. In addition to that, harvest the seeds from the crossbred fruit.

5. Once you have your seeds, fill a tray with some fresh soil and water it a little bit. Plant your seeds and cover the tray, then put it somewhere that it can get enough light to grow over time. These seeds will need to be cared for quite a bit to ensure that your newly created fruit can now grow from its own seeds.

6. Once your seeds begin to sprout and have at least two leaves on them, transplant them into pots until they get even bigger. Once they are more mature, you can move them to a more permanent place for them to thrive and grow over time. The crossbred fruits should now start to produce on their own from this plant.

Stewart Scott is a certified arborist and is the owner of Cevet Tree Care, where he offers the best tree service Columbia MO has to offer. Cevet has provided tree trimming and other tree care services to mid-Missouri for almost 20 years.