How to Pollinate Herbs

Encouraging Natural Propagation

• 1

  Let your herb plants' flowers grow. Do not prune the plants or remove their blossom stems.

• 2

  Place your herb plants outdoors when their flowers open. Although many herbs can be grown indoors, they have a better chance of being pollinated outdoors where bees have access to them. Place the herb plants' containers near other flowering plants that bees may visit.

• 3

  Allow nature to take its course. Bees pollinate 75 percent of the world's food crops and are naturally attracted to culinary herb plants.

Pollinating by Hand

• 4

  Wash a small paintbrush thoroughly, removing all particles of dirt or other debris.

• 5

  Locate an herb flower's stamen and its stigma. A stamen is a short filament emerging from the flower's center, and it has a yellow, pollen-bearing anther at its tip. The stigma also rises from the flower's center. It is connected to the longer stalk, called the pistil, and separates at the tip into two, gummy lobes. The stigma is sticky.

• 6

  Dab the tip of the small paintbrush on pollen that is on the stamen of one kind of herb plant. Transfer the pollen on the paintbrush to the stigma of the same kind of herb plant, such as the stigma of the same plant from which you collected pollen. The transferred pollen should be visible on the stigma. Repeat the procedure to pollinate other herb plants' flowers.