You can but your timing has to be good or youâll just pick off green sacks that will never get to mature. They have to turn a certain greenish yellow color. Pick a few to experiment with at different times and colors and youâll get the hang of when your plant is ready.
Take them when they look like this, just before they open. I accidentally grabbed a few that werenât nearly close,. And iâm happy to have those in the picture for comparison
The pollen sacks will get a yellow tint when they are getting close.
Put the unopened pods on wax paper folded in half but without the folded half crushing the pollen⌠itâs only there to protect from wind or breeze.
Leave it in a dry dark place for twenty four hours. The flowers will now be open. Move them to the side and collect the pollen that had separated overnight. Then take a credit card and very lightly chop at the flowers to agitate them and release more pollen onto the paper and again move the flowers to the side and collect that pollen. Move all collected pollen into an area away from the wet vegetative material that you keep adding every day as you add fresh flowers. I moved my pollen to the folded crease. You donât want the fresh vegetative materials sitting on your pollen, and I usually add some dry rice grains to my pollen section, and I donât allow the pollen to lay in a pile like shown in the photo. ,. I spread it out to dry properly so it does not clump. After your second day with the agitated batch of flowers you can move them back-and-forth and each time you move them a little more pollen will come loose. At that point the flowers are dry and nearly devoid of pollen. So I will take them and put them on a table, moving them off the wax paper with a cardâŚand you can see that there is still a little bit of pollen left over which I can collect with a credit card and put on the wax paper. Hope this helps!
This is a great way to get clean pollen. Use the corner of a credit card to flick any pieces of vegetative matter out of the pollen. Dragging the card over agitated flowers moves the flowers while leaving the pollen behind