If caging is not feasible, what materials are good to cover only flowers? Can the whole plant be covered too?
Bagging the plant is the conventional and proven technique to allow selfing in otherwise cross pollinated crop plants. In usual practice, one uses a thin butter paper bags of considerable height and breadth (you need to design as per the size of the flower) to cover only the flower portion avoiding other aerial parts to facilitate photosynthesis and other normal metabolism of plants. In my opinion, design the bags yourself and use it without covering the whole plant.
We use microperforated polypropylene plastic bags to cover the inflorescence or the whole plant. These bags allow photosyntehsis, transpiration, etc.., avoiding crosspolination. I do not know if you can find them in your country, in Europe they sell them for bagging foods (like bread or vegetables). The problem is to find bagss big enough to cover a plant.
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