hand pollination

My indoor started tomatoes have started to flower; they are not yet planted outdoors (last frost free day around here is generally after the 24th of May) so they are only out on the warm days and in at night. There are not many bees out yet because of the aforementioned climate. I don't want to waste those early flowers. Does anyone have any tips on hand pollination. The websites I've visited suggest an electric toothbrush but for the life of me I can't figure out what I would do with it.

Tomatoes are self fertile.All you have to do is vibrate the flower to move the pollen around.It's not necessary to transfer the pollen from flower to flower and bees don't usually do it in real life either.The motion of the wind will stir the flower enough to let it pollinate itself.

That said...how big a container are your tomatoes in? If they are still in small 'transplant' containers,as hard as it is to do...pinch off the blooms.Your tomatoes need to establish a healthy root system at this point in their lives, and not spend energy to produce fruit.The stress of transplant is enough,don't put any extra on them by having them trying to maintain a crop at the same time.You'll get a much better harvest if you will let them establish themselves outside before flowering.

By the way,welcome to DG!If you go to the right hand column and click on the preferences link,you can set your zone and location so that people can customize advice to your area.

Hope to see you around!

Thanks for the advice. I hope I have what it takes to follow it. The lure of an early vine ripened tomato in this area is pretty strong.

Well,vine ripened tomatoes here in KY where we have had lots of temps in the upper 80's for the last month is pretty tempting too.

What I usually do is plant a cherry type in a 5 gallon bucket and use the handle to haul it in and out of the house...I didn't get around to it this year,and now I'll have to wait like everyone else....usually by mid June we have all we can eat...so I'll just suffer along with you.

Here's a picture of one of my favorites to tide you over...Pruden's Purple

Ah, Mid June. Well around here I don't let my babies enter the ground until the first of June because there have years when snow storms have arrived after the first. And if I have one vine ripened cherry tomato by the first week of July I would be considered a master tomato gardener. Generally it's late august before I can say we'd have all we could eat. The joys of gardening where as we say there is winter 6 months of the year and tough sledding for the other six.