Tomato seed saving

[the lemon tree]

What are the best practices for it? I'm planning ahead for next year and would like to save seeds from my heirloom tomatoes. I supposed I can Google but I like posting here better .

 

[digitS']

I have gotten away with very casual tomato seed saving. In fact, I've gotten away with it - many, many times.

Scoop out the seeds, gel and all, and spread them thinly on a paper towel. Place paper towel in sunshine and leave it there for a couple of weeks. I've used the kitchen windowsill and the rail of the deck - paper held down by 2 bricks.

I live where afternoon humidity often falls below 20% during summer afternoons. A kitchen where humidity is high, whether the seeds are in a sunny window or not, may not be the best place. Even on a sunny rail outdoors may not be a good place with high humidity .

Sparrows may eat tomato seed left outdoors. The seed probably goes right thru them but they eat them, nonetheless. They don't usually eat them, tho'.

The seeds stick tightly to paper towels. I've successfully planted seeds with paper towel fibers stuck to them - no problem there. However, separating these seeds and bits of paper with a knife point is a bit tedious. I think I'll use a paper plate this year and see if it isn't easier to loosen the seeds.

Best practices??

Many folks use a water-fermentation technique. In just a day or 2, the gel has fermented away and the seed can be filtered out and dried. I guess this would work okay but it, reportedly, attracts fruit flies and, by itself, wouldn't result in disease-free seed.

Some people use a peroxide wash after fermenting the seeds and gel. That sounds effective but also like a lot of bother. I think I'll just use a paper plate and keep an eye out for the sparrows .

Steve

 

[hoodat]

I have an old metal collander with the opening too small for the seeds to go through. I just scoop out pulp and seeds and put them under running water in the collander. Scrub them around a little to get as much of the pulp off them as I can and then dry. I dry them on a ceramic plate because no matter how you scrub them enough of the pulp will stay with them to make them stick. Once they are dry you can scrape them off the plate with a plastic spatula. Go to your nearest hobby store (or try to talk your pharmacist out of one of the ones they put in with pills) and get one of those silca jell desicants to put in a baby food jar with the seeds. That will keep them dry enough so you don't have to worry about molding.

 

[Kim_NC]

I have gotten away with very casual tomato seed saving. In fact, I've gotten away with it - many, many times.

Scoop out the seeds, gel and all, and spread them thinly on a paper towel. Place paper towel in sunshine and leave it there for a couple of weeks. I've used the kitchen windowsill and the rail of the deck - paper held down by 2 bricks.

I live where afternoon humidity often falls below 20% during summer afternoons. A kitchen where humidity is high, whether the seeds are in a sunny window or not, may not be the best place. Even on a sunny rail outdoors may not be a good place with high humidity .

Sparrows may eat tomato seed left outdoors. The seed probably goes right thru them but they eat them, nonetheless. They don't usually eat them, tho'.

The seeds stick tightly to paper towels. I've successfully planted seeds with paper towel fibers stuck to them - no problem there. However, separating these seeds and bits of paper with a knife point is a bit tedious. I think I'll use a paper plate this year and see if it isn't easier to loosen the seeds.

Best practices??

Many folks use a water-fermentation technique. In just a day or 2, the gel has fermented away and the seed can be filtered out and dried. I guess this would work okay but it, reportedly, attracts fruit flies and, by itself, wouldn't result in disease-free seed.

Some people use a peroxide wash after fermenting the seeds and gel. That sounds effective but also like a lot of bother. I think I'll just use a paper plate and keep an eye out for the sparrows .

Steve

We do the same method on a paper towel, napkin or paper plate (whatever is handy at the time). It works well in a sunny kitchen window for us (humid here). Of course, we're run air conditioning once the temp's get above 85*, so that helps the humidity inside.

I did the whole ferment the seeds, dry, etc one time. The results we no better than the 'paper method'. Not that it was a very scientific sample, but still I decided fermenting wasn't worth the effort.

Do you leave yours on the paper, Steve? Once dreid, we store them in an envelope. At planting time, we just cut the paper down to individual seeds, then plant paper and all.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I usually use the paper towel method, sometimes using newspaper instead of a paper towel. Just scoop out the seeds and pulp of a very vine-ripened tomato, put them in a workshop on my table saw and let them dry for a week or so. They are not in the sun. Last year, I tried drying them on wax paper. It made it a little easier to separate them, but not much. The pulp still sticks them together. I'll probably go back to the paper towel/newspaper method again. Once they are dry, I put them in a glass jar to keep them airtight (dry, insect and and mouse-free) and store them in the detached, unheated workshop in a corner where it never gets sunny. There is a window on the north side so I can't say I store them in the dark, which might be better.

I think the purpose of the fermentation process is to get clean seeds, but since I'm not a commercial operation I don't worry about how pretty they are. I usually get as good or better germination rates from the seeds I save than from the hybrid seeds I buy. Maybe just coincidence.

 

[patandchickens]

Another vote for "just squooshing an overripe tomato out on a paper towel and letting it dry, has always worked fine for me"

You can get all ferment-y and rinse-y if you want, heck if you are super paranoid about keeping a given variety pure you can bag the flowers before they open and hand-pollinate them so you KNOW that tress has 'purebred' (non-outcrossed) seeds...

...but for practical purposes, all that is usually purely discretionary

The purpose of the fermentation process btw is supposedly to deactivate/remove anti-germination factors in the gel surrounding the seeds.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[vfem]

I just pick out what I want while I'm cutting up the tomatoes for sauces and such. I just don't think about it until I have a kitchen full of tomatoes.... still some time away yet!

 

[hoodat]

Slightly OT but saving your own seed has an advantage not often considered. Over time you will develop a strain of tomato that is very well adapted to your garden conditions, provided you save your seeds from the best tomatos on the healthiest vines. Never get your seeds from culls.

 

[the lemon tree]

Slightly OT but saving your own seed has an advantage not often considered. Over time you will develop a strain of tomato that is very well adapted to your garden conditions, provided you save your seeds from the best tomatos on the healthiest vines. Never get your seeds from culls.

Yep, I read this somewhere else which further motivated me to start saving seed. That and the ridiculous amount of money I don't spend buying them.

 

[Natalie]

We saved seeds from two years ago and planted them last year. I didn't think about cross pollination between strains, so I ended up with a bunch of weird knobby pithy yucky things. They were not delicious, and I was mad.

If you save seeds, make sure you are only growing one strain or that your different strains are separated by as much space as possible. Having a whole batch of weird gross tomatoes is not fun.