Saving your Tomato Seeds

Saving seeds is a hobby I just love. There are some rules to this hobby. The main thing is you do not want to save seeds from any store bought fruit or vegetables. Those could have been sprayed with pesticides and also almost 99% of store bought fruit and vegetables are hybrid which means they will only produce one generation.

You can save them if you want to try. 

Get seeds that come from a reliable source:

• Your Garden
• Farmers Market
• Neighbors Garden

Tools you will need:

• Bowls for each type of seed (Like Beef Steak, Roma etc)
• Small jars for each variety
• Strainer
• Cheesecloth
• Rubber Bands
• Small spoon
• Labels/Small Post its or piece of paper

Back to business take the tomato you want to save the seeds for and cut it in half. You will see the seed and take your spoon and scoop the seeds out into the bowl. Do not worry about the gunk sticking to your seeds we will clean that off later. Once you have gotten the seeds out for both sides of your tomato you can still use that tomato for a meal or snack. 

Do the rest of the tomatoes at the same time keeping them separate and having labels. 

There have been times when I did not label and it was a guessing game the following Spring. 

Now you should have all you seeds out and ready to be cleaned. 

Take each bowl and pour your gunky seeds into the strainer run cold water over them while lightly rubbing the gunk off as much as you can. This is only the first cleaning it just get the large stuff off. 

Each different type of tomato seed will have its own container take the seeds and put them in a jar and fill that jar half way up with cold water. Some seeds (the bad ones) will float and then others (the good ones) will sink.  Once they are all cleaned and in their jars cover the jars with cheesecloth and secure with a rubber band. Let them sit for at least one week. This is when they are germinating. 

Now after the one week take each jar and get rid of anything that is floating. If you pour the liquid out gently the top stuff drains out. There may be some extra but that just use a spoon to grab them our. Get your strainer back out and clean the seeds that have sunk to the bottom those are the good seeds. 

You will need some paper towels to dry them. Just lay them out on the wax paper or clean plate label it. I don't use the paper towels to dry them they end up sticking and it is a pain in the butt to seperate. Once the seeds have dried which takes about 3 weeks they are ready to get bagged. 

I save all containers. The small seeds in this post were saved in an old makeup container and the large batch in an old cassette tape box. Boom

Done! I use bags when I am trading seeds Make them cute they make a great gift with a little garden pot of soil.