Saving tomato seeds? Save the best breed

Posted in Plants, Trees & Shrubs,Fruits, Veggies & Herbs

Tomatoes are America’s favorite veggie to grow, and the right varieties are easy to start from saved seeds year after year. It’s important to first know whether the variety you plan to save is hybrid, fruiting unreliably, or open-pollinated, fruiting reliably. A little research – on the tag, in seed catalogs or on the web – can help determine which you have.

Hybrid tomatoes

Scoop the seed cavities out of fully ripened
tomatoes to begin the process of saving
seed for next year.

Many grocery store tomato varieties are hybrids, created by crossing two different parent plants in order to produce offspring that have the best traits of both. Hybrid tomatoes are typically bred for better disease-resistance, higher yield, more uniform size and earlier ripening. Commercial varieties are also bred for resistance to shipping damage. Unfortunately, hybrid seed will seldom "come true" – meaning the offspring won’t produce the same fruits reliably.

Open-pollinated (heirloom) tomatoes

Open-pollinated seeds are from tomatoes that have been left to pollinate themselves. Their fruits bear only naturally determined traits. Often called “heirlooms,” many of these older, open-pollinated tomatoes, such as ‘Brandywine’, ‘Black Krim’, ‘Mortgage Lifter’, and ‘Green Zebra’ may not handle stress like their hybrid brethren, but they offer some of the best taste. Saved seed from heirloom tomatoes will almost always fruit to resemble the parent.

How to save tomato seeds

1. Select one or more of the best fruits and let them ripen fully on the vine. Look for disease-free, bug-free fruits and ones with the traits you like most. For example, if you’re after big fruits, save seed from the biggest tomato on the plant. If you’d like ones to ripen as soon as possible, save seed from the first fruit that fully ripens.
2. Scoop out the fleshy seed cavities from the ripened fruit and into a jar.
3. Add enough room-temperature water to cover the flesh (about a half of a cup).
4. Stir the jar daily for the next three or four days, by which time the best seed will have sunk to the bottom of the jar. Discard the floating pulp and less-viable seed.
5. Spread out the saved seeds on a paper towel. Let dry for up to a week.
6. Store the seeds in a labeled envelope in a screw-top glass jar in a cool, dry place, such as the refrigerator, until you’re ready to start them the following year. As an added precaution against rot, you might add a small envelope of silica gel to the glass jar.
7. Saved tomato seeds will germinate well for two to three years, so keep some of the old seed in case of a later crop failure.

Many gardeners just lay out collected seeds – flesh and all – to dry on newspaper for several days, without bothering with the water step. The main advantage of the water treatment is that the seed ferments enough to kill most pathogens that a parent plant might have carried.