Shovels, trowels, fertilizer and rakes are some of the equipment home gardeners use to coax their flowers and vegetables, but for a small number of North Fork gardeners, the tools are Q-tips, hair dryers, paintbrushes and electric toothbrushes.

That’s because the latter group are hand pollinators who, rather than letting nature do its job as it has for millions of years, are attempting to alter the course of their garden to increase their yield, create new colors in their flowers or just try their hand at experimenting with the natural world.

Daniel Knote, one of the community gardeners at the Hallockville Community Garden in Riverhead, decided to try his hand at hand-pollinating this summer. He went on YouTube, where the video lessons focused on bagging the corn’s tassels and then sprinkling those tassels over the corn silk.

“Self-pollinating was somewhat successful last year, so this year I cut the branches to allow the tassels drop to have a clear drop to the silk and I hand pollinated. I simply brushed the tassels in the silk and left it to remain in the silk. It worked well, just ask the raccoons!”

His entire crop was wiped out in one night by a family of voracious raccoons.

Calling himself an occasional hand pollinator, Dan Gilrein, an entomologist at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead, believes there are a number of gardeners trying their hand at fooling around with Mother Nature.

“It’s something people do on their own; they want to cross-pollinate to see if they can get new varieties, patterns and colors. I’ve done it with a lemon which wasn’t setting fruit unless I help it out. Then it produces more fruit. It’s not hard. It’s fun and easy.”

Pollinating by hand is more common in tropical regions where Gilrein said commercial farmers can’t rely on insects to produce enough to make this labor-intensive form of producing produce and flowers worthwhile economically. “Where vanilla is grown, often they hand pollinate. The pod that’s left behind when the flower falls off is then dried in the sun to make vanilla extract.” Greenhouse-grown tomatoes are frequently the product of commercial bumblebees, brought in to buzz around to help pollinate.

‘For kicks’

At the Tissue Culture Lab at Cornell University on Sound Avenue in Riverhead, Dr. Mark Bridgen, professor of integrative plant science whose specialty is plant breeding, fields occasional calls and emails from North Forkers curious about hand-pollinating their flowers.

He said most of the questions are “How do I hand pollinate?” and “Why isn’t it working?”

“I don’t think people are doing it because there aren’t enough pollinators around. They might just want to try it for kicks. They’re interested in seeing what happens. Usually, it means someone is going in there with a paintbrush and taking pollen from one plant to another.”

As he was demonstrating how he helped turn alstroemeria, a common cut flower in grocery stores on the East End, into a flower that is winter-hardy, he said, “Now you can have cut flowers every year and it grows even in colder upstate New York.”

He feels the practice is time-consuming, challenging and tedious, and it helps to know the stage of flowers because the male part ripens before the female in some blooms. He said it can be time-consuming and, professionally, it’s tedious. But the reward could be increasing a gardener’s yield or creating a new colorful hybrid flower. “Some of the callers want to cross apples — and I feel fruit trees are a long-term commitment. It takes several years.”

‘It’s not hard. It’s fun and easy.’ Dan Gilrein, Cornell Cooperative Extension entomologist

Hand pollinating with Q-tips

Standing next to their pawpaw tree in the backyard of their Calverton home, master gardeners Versha Gupta and Kevin Shea used a Q-tip to simulate what natural pollinators would do, but don’t because “the trees smell like rotting flesh so not a lot of insects show up to pollinate it,” Gupta said. “It’s highly probable if we don’t hand pollinate, we won’t get any fruit.”

The couple, who also volunteer at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead, believe they are in the small minority of Long Islanders who hand pollinate and grow this unique fruit, a green pod that gets six inches long and “tastes like a banana mango creamy custard,” according to Shea.

Both agreed that in China, where the local bee population has collapsed, farmers are hand-pollinating their pear and apple orchards, which can be costly considering the labor involved. But Gupta thinks for the North Fork, “only a handful of people are hand pollinating.”

“I think a lot of people are doing it,” said Nancy DePas Reinertsen, co-chair of ReWild Long Island – North Fork. “You can take a Q-tip or a paintbrush and go from the pollen of one flower. It’s pretty cool. I’m doing the work the bees should be doing.” Another technique is to use a clothespin and close the squash flower to ensure the pollen will reach the ovary. “I don’t do that,” she added.

Regenerative agriculture

Walking barefoot in her raspberry greenhouse patch, picking the fruit in her denim overalls, Laura Klahre emphasized how passionate she is about using only natural pollinators because of her dedication to regenerative agriculture. “We take the free natural services of bumblebees, mining bees, cellophane bees, flower flies and moths for granted.” The 2-acre organic berry farm in Southold where she and her husband farm full time has produced award-winning jam as well as on-the-ground innovations solely using wild pollinators, according to her Blossom Meadow Farm website.

It’s been Klahre’s lifelong mission to encourage gardeners to coax natural pollinators into their yard with what she feels are practical and easy tips to ensure a bountiful harvest. “Letting your lawn live by allowing dandelion, clover, and violets to grow in it so bees will then pollinate your garden. Turning your lights off at night (moths are distracted by light pollution) and having wild non-mulched areas in your landscape for bees to live.” She pointed out that approximately 70% of the 450 pollinating species found in New York state live in the ground.

Leaving the greenhouse and going over to her tomato patch, Klahre, to demonstrate hand-pollinating, turned on a tool that is normally used at the bathroom sink. An electric toothbrush — a device that then bristled against the yellow flowers of her tomato plants, making the pollen fall and mimicking pollination by “the little creatures,” as she called natural pollinators.

Klahre has seen this technique online alongside YouTube videos of people swirling Q-tips around in zucchini flowers to accomplish the same type of hand-pollinating. “We don’t hand pollinate here; we rely on wild pollinators who are three times better than honeybees.”

But like Klahre’s demonstration with the electric toothbrush, it can be a labor-intensive science experiment going from flower to flower.

“For the most part, I don’t see bees or other pollinators being replaced by this. People do it as a hobby. The success rate is low, but it’s intriguing,” said Gilrein.