Seed shortages on our minds saving seeds from your garden is more important than ever. So how do you save tomato seeds? There are a couple of methods that can be successful but one way you can do this is through fermentation of tomato seeds. This is not a hard process so don’t let it intimidate you! I’ve described the process in full in this post but I also put together a video for you which covers everything here.
To save tomato seeds through fermentation gather up some ripe tomatoes, or better yet ones that are over ripe (aka rotting), and toss them in a jar with some water, let it sit for a few days, then strain the pulp and water to separate the seeds. Once separated the seeds can be dried and stored for the next gardening season.
Hybrid and Heirloom Tomatoes
If you had the forethought to protect your tomato flowers from cross pollination earlier in the season that is awesome! If not you can still take a chance and save seeds. Tomato flowers are self fertile since they are “perfect” flowers and have both male and female parts. Because of this if you are growing heirloom varieties you may have a good chance of getting seeds that are true to type. However if they happened to get pollinated you may end up with a cross which may not be a bad thing, in fact it could be better than the original, but you won’t know until you grow!
If you planted F1 hybrid tomatoes you will probably see unreliable results from the tomato offspring. Hybrids are a cross between two other varieties and the offspring could end up quite different. It might be interesting to see what results but don’t expect them to turn out like the plant you grew.
To Prevent Cross Pollination of Tomato Seeds
Use a small mesh bag over the flowers of tomatoes you want to save prior to the flowers opening. That will keep the insects from pollinating the plants and insure that only pollen from the flower pollinates the same flower. That will preserve the genetics of the original plant.
How to Save Tomato Seed through Fermentation
Step 1 First gather up the tomatoes from which you want to save seed. Tomatoes at the peak of ripeness or even those that are overripe are good candidates.
Step 2 Next take the tomatoes and toss them in a jar. Fill the jar with water and shake it up really good. This will bust up the tomatoes and allow the seeds to separate out from the pulp some.
Step 3 I removed the top of the jar next and replaced with a canning ring that held a paper towel over the jar. The purpose of this was to allow oxygen to get to the fermentation mixture.
Step 4 I left the tomato “slop” in the jar for 4-5 days to give it time to ferment.
Step 5 Then I drained the tomato bits and separated the pulp from the water. The tomato parts floated and the seeds had sunk to the bottom which made for easy separating. Once that was done I added water and continued to strain the pulp from the seeds until it was almost clear.
Step 6 Next it was time for the seeds to dry so I placed the cleaned tomato seed onto a paper towel and allowed them to air dry for a couple days. Once the seeds were dry I packed them up into seed packets.
Saving seeds through fermenting is not the only viable way to save tomato seeds. I usually just gather the seed as I’m using them in the kitchen, let them dry out, then store them in packets. The disadvantage of that is that the seeds may take slightly longer to germinate when I sow them. I say “may” because I’ve never actually done a comparison between the two methods.
The fermentation method for tomatoes is supposed to do two things:
- Clean the seed of growth inhibitors
- Kill off diseases that may live on the seeds.
I’ve never had a problem saving them by simply collecting them but the fermentation method is a fantastic way to take care of large quantities of seed at a time. It’s much easier to drop several tomatoes into a jar, shake them up, ferment, then separate the seeds rather than to cut and spoon out a bunch of seeds.
I recommend trying both methods to see what works best for you. I think you can be successful either way!
If you prefer not to worry about seed saving and would rather to just buy fresh high quality seed from a very good seed company check out Botanical Interests Seed Company (Aff.). They have a great selection of seeds with consistent quality!
Envelopes for Seed Saving
For some options to use for storing your seeds try some of the envelopes below from Amazon (aff.).