It all started last year when a friend of mine brought over these yellow pear tomatoes that she said were growing like weeds over her entire backyard and side yard. Since I'm a tomato fiend (recipe 1, 2, and 3 as evidence), I decided to try out saving the seeds for my mom to plant them in her garden...
Let's see how I did it!
By the way, this is one of the two plants that my mom grew in her garden from the seeds of a few tomatoes that I saved. Amazingly enough, it popped up out of nowhere because the original plant was grown in a pot clear across the yard! She thinks that it started growing in this second pot when she needed a bit more soil for the pepper plant and borrowed it from the tomato plant. I guess a few of the seeds that were planted hitched a ride!
Here is how I got these plants going!
- Cut the tomato in half to and remove all of the seeds by squeezing or pulling out with your fingers/knife.
- Place them into a fine mesh strainer. I didn't have many seeds because I used tiny tomatoes (yellow pear and red cherry), so I just used a small strainer meant for coffee and tea.
3. Rinse off as much of the goo as possible by rubbing the seeds together and against the strainer.
4. Let dry for a couple of days.
5. If you plan to use them right away, toss them into dirt! I literally threw them into a vacant pot from my mom and they started to grow quick!
6. If you plan to use them at another time, remove the seeds and place them into plastic containers for later use.
7. Make sure to label them! The seeds may look similar when you try to plant them later on.
8. For storage purposes, make sure that you put it in a low-moisture environment. Some people will freeze their seeds to preserve them as well.
I'm going to try freezing some of the seeds from this last round of tomatoes and seeing how they pan out next year. See, I'm looking forward to next year's crop already!
Happy growing!
Great! I hope it works out for you too. :) It definitely worked best from the little cherry and pear tomatoes, rather than the larger ones, but they were all successful this season. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHey Diane,
ReplyDeleteStopping by from the Lovely Ladies Linky to say HEY! and thank you for sharing this post. I have wanted to grow heirloom tomatoes for years and next summer I'm gonna do just that thanks to you. My Granny Ridge had a garden out back of her trailer house and she grew the most amazing little yellow pear tomatoes. I can almost taste those little sun ripened beauties now. I would literally sit my fat little hiney out in the garden and pluck them from the vine and pop them into my mouth fast as my fat little fingers would allow. I don't have any tomatoes to get the seeds from but I will be doing some investigating and figuring that out before next summer. Thanks again for the post and the wonderful memories. <3 Kim
Thank you for the kind words! I'm a definite tomato lover as well, and apparently used to eat them like candy when I was a kid too! It was totally on a whim that I started saving the seeds to plant, and I'm ecstatic that they started to grow so well! Good luck to you!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this! I have always wanted to try this but didn't know where to start. I pinned it so that I remember next year.
ReplyDeleteSure! For our last tomatoes of this year, I'm going to try freezing the seeds and see if they produce next year when it's time to replant. Fingers crossed for both of us!
ReplyDeleteI have always wanted to try this, but have been too lazy to do so! LOL
ReplyDeleteAgain, thanks for joining the Link Up this week! Don't forget to enter the giveaway!