1) Pepper plants have perfect flowers. Meaning they have both the male and female parts on every flower, and therefore, they are self-pollinating.

2) When two peppers are crossed the fruit should look mostly like a normal fruit from the plant that it is growing on. The seeds are what will become the hybrid (F1, first generation cross) plants once you grow them.

If you plan on saving pure seeds, you need to isolate the particular plant(s) so that there are no hybrid seeds created. Crosses can happen from wind, insects, and the gardener themselves.

If you want to create/save hybrid seeds, you can help the cross along by removing a flower from one plant with 'X' desired traits and rub it on the flower of the plant with 'Y' desired traits to intermix the pollen and create seeds with 'XY' desired traits. However, you might have to grow several generations of your cross to attain a hybrid that is stable.

I have over 20 different varieties, but I will only be saving seed from a couple of plants that will be isolated this year. Then next year I will save seeds from a couple more plants. And do that every year hereafter to build up my seed stock.

Hi,

Short answers...

1) Almost all pepper species are self pollinating (i.e. they have both male and female components).

2) If crossing occurs, fruit will still grow true BUT and plants subsequently grown from seeds of the crossed plant could exhibit mixed traits of both parents. See link below for a fuller illustration of plant crossing. It uses tomatoes but the concept equally applies to peppers.

Bill

Here is a link that might be useful: Crossing

Ah thanks for the answers.

Oh yeah something else springs to mind will the seeds in a pod all have the same traits or will they have variation?