August 3, 2025 – Tomato production and may stop during the summer heat. Day temps of 95° and night temps not lower than 75° cause pollen to hardens to an extent that bees can’t do their job. Further, tomatoes have great difficulty manufacturing ethylene, which is necessary to trigger the ability to turn red.
To get around this, one can put green tomatoes with ripe or ripening tomatoes and perhaps a ripe banana. The ethylene from them can trigger ethylene production in the green tomatoes.
Another way is to take a cluster of tomato flowers in your hand and gently shake/vibrate them for several seconds as fast as you gently can! The vibrations can shake loose pollen for bees to do their job in helping pollination.
Tomatoes are self-pollinating plants whose flowers contain both male and female reproductive organs. They rely on external stimulation for pollination to occur. An external force transfers the pollen between the anthers (the male part) and the stigma (the female part) within each flower. Breaking the hardened pollen allows both parts to come together when pollinators gather pollen. Does this method work? Yes, but unfortunately, many shake way to hard or not hard enough.
Vibrations to break up hardened pollen is called buzzing, which mimics the buzzing effect of pollinators such as bumble bees. A new method of electric buzzing is providing great results. Instead of using your hands to vibrate, one hand holds the flowers and an electric toothbrush is placed against the base of each flower and turned on for a few seconds every 2-3 days. This takes a lot of time, but production is dramatically improved.
The best time of the days to buzz is noon or alternatively, from late morning to early afternoon, because the flowers are fully open and thus more receptive to pollination.
