Actually, if you don't have much of anything blooming right now, you probably could have just as well left it uncapped. I think many beginning cappers think it's difficult because they try to be too perfect. Actually capping is one thing you can be pretty darn lazy and careless about and still be effective. Don't worry--the cap's not going to fall off and don't worry about foreign pollen getting in there--it's highly unlikely, and if a couple grains do--so what--that can sometimes be a good thing. Especially if they act as a mentor in some fashion.
Here's the thing with pollination. I always like to say you can pollenate 'six ways from sundown'. I think the way you've been doing it is to leave the stigma unprotected for the first day or two, then pollenate on day two or three, then leave it unprotected for the duration. Nothing wrong with that; I do that a lot on purpose when doing preliminary exploration and it's the one way I like the most. It almost always gives me more than half of my intended target offspring and it gives me a little variety of open pollination offspring both before and after my intentional dosage. Sometimes there are some real nice surprises in this before and after category. I get the most enjoyment out of that procedure two years after the fact. I'm not alone when it comes to favoring this method; other well known hybridizers use it a lot too, in preliminary crossing work. You only need 20 or 25 seeds in a pot to tell you what the cross will be. If it's good cross, then get serious with protective caps in the next stage of controlled crossing.
Here's my lazy way of protective capping. I fold a little square of foil (about 1 & 1/4 inches or so) in half. Then I grasp both ends with thumb and forefingers and push to form a little canoe. Center the stigma in the canoe form. Then bend both ends of foil down gently and ever-so-lightly tighten around the style. Done! No muss-no fuss; I can do it faster than I type. There!
