how to preserve pollen

Hi people! i cutted down a male plant and saved some of the most madure flowers. My mean is to use the pollen when the females i want to pollinate get to a more advanced stage in flowering, cause they are just starting bud formation and i dont want mess it up for just a few seeds. I think the best time to pollinate would be in a month or so, do you think the pollen i just harvested will be still fertile? should i freeze it?
thanks in advance

...did it not occur to you that this is not a new hobby so maybe this topic might have been covered before?

some threads on pollen

...the search function is your friend, if you want as many answers as you can get and as fast as possible and with the ability to weed out the wrong answers then you need to go hunting for your answers in the older threads that have spanned a length of time and it's in these threads where you will not only find your answer, you'll also find MANY other answers you didn't even know to ask.


good luck, bozo

hahah thanks bro , sorry if i bothered you

Cold dark place. The old timers say no fridge.
Some people will freeze but unless you can leave the freezer unopened for 10 years
i'd just put it in paper then glass jar, then dark, cold place.
(nice stable temps are best)

make sure to remove any thing but pollen ..collect it like cocaine...i say store half in freezer and half in cool dark place...why risk it.. i make little envelopes like coke used to come in,, then place in jar with some rice in back of freezer....yeehaw

Take your pollen and collect it on a plate or dish, I find paper plates to work for me. I take pieces of sheet paper and fold them into fourths a little moister along the edge of the fold allows you to tear them apart. I then fold the four pieces of paper into packets and use painter tape to them closed. I fill the paper packets with pollen and tape them closed. I put some rice in a quart mason jar with a breathable filter, I place the packets of pollen in the jar and place the jar in the fridge for one week. After a week the pollen packets are removed and placed into a zip lock bag and placed into the freezer until ready to use.

Good stuff Gan

thank you all !
@Ganoderma your method sounds pretty elaborated, the filter and the glass jar are to dehydrate the pollen right? thanks a lot !

I have to get me some of these Micro Centrifuge Tubes to store pollen.

They sell them Ebay and elsewhere on the Web.

How To Collect And Store Pollen

zapallo said:

thank you all !
@Ganoderma your method sounds pretty elaborated, the filter and the glass jar are to dehydrate the pollen right? thanks a lot !

Click to expand...

Yes, to dehydrate the pollen before freezing it.

Here's what I do:

After collecting, I leave it on the bit of plastic I use to collect, in a tupperwear container together with some silica gel desiccant overnight.



Then I take a thick straw (next time you get a burger or KFC grab a few), cut into 3 pieces, and grip the section of straw so that 3-4 mm protrudes from the adjustable wrench.



Then use a lighter to gently melt the end, and quickly press the molten plastic down flat with a cold metal object that you've kept close to hand. I like to use the slightly rounded handle of a retractable box-cutter.





Tip a dose of pollen carefully into the open end of the straw, then repeat the procedure above to seal the straw.

Try a couple of practice runs using flour before you use pollen to make sure you can get a good seal. Squeeze the straw firmly (but not too hard) to make sure it's air tight every time you complete a straw. Don't squeeze the pollen itself.



Don't forget to write some info on the straw with a sharpie.

After that I store the straw for at least another night in a another small tupperwear container with desiccant in the fridge. If it's not going to be used in a few weeks then after 24 hrs I put the whole lot in another larger tupperwear container I keep in the freezer.