How To Save Tomato Seeds

You did it! You successfully grew a big, beautiful and healthy tomato plant. It may be your first ever tomato, or it might be your 97th. Regardless, you are very proud of it. And almost a little sad that the growing season has to come to an end.

Maybe this is the year that you decide to start saving and collecting the seeds from your homegrown bounty. Saving your own seeds is a great way to introduce sustainability into your life, and it is a wonderful skill to learn. 

You can read an in depth article about the whys and hows of seed saving here.

This year I grew three varieties of tomatoes that did exceptionally well in our difficult growing zone: Brad’s Atomic Grape, Lucid Gem, and Cosmonaut Volkov. Lately I have been intrigued by the subject of landrace seeds, which in short, is selecting for and saving seeds from plants that grow well in a particular region, and eventually creating a regionalized version of this plant. I’d love to do that with a few of my favorite (and tricky to grow) plants. 

In this article, I’ll outline for you how to successfully save the seeds from your favorite tomato plants. I’ve also made a  short video for those of you who are more visual learners. You can find it by clicking here.

For those of you who like the detailed article to accompany the video, read on to learn all about how to save tomato seeds.

Choose Wisely

Now, in order to save healthy seeds that will produce healthy plants, it is important to select seeds from healthy plants. Makes sense, right? Not only should you select healthy plants, you should select the healthiest fruits from those plants. I am hoping to select for fast maturity, so I am saving seeds from the earliest fruits. 

A note on cross pollination:

Any open-pollinated plant has the chance of being cross pollinated with another variety. Since tomato blossoms contain both the male and female parts within a single flower, they do not cross pollinate as easily as, say, squash plants do. But it is still a possibility to accidentally cross pollinate your tomato plants if you have multiple varieties closeby. If you want to be absolutely certain to not cross pollinate, use something like this to cover your blossoms. Be sure to tickle and flick the blossoms to ensure they self pollinate!

Scoop the Goop

You’ve chosen the most beautiful tomato from the most healthy plant. Excellent! Now comes the fun part – scooping the goopy seedy gel out! Grab yourself a jar or shallow dish and put a few inches of water inside. Cut your tomato open and scoop the seeds out into the water. 

Fermenting

Why scoop the seeds into water? You could just scoop them out onto a dry surface and dry them this way, but in my experience, you get better germination rates by fermenting the seeds first. By allowing the seeds to ferment for a few days in water, it helps to break down the mucousy layer surrounding the little seeds. Also known as “all that goop”. 

After your scoop all the seeds into the water, go place your dish on your kitchen counter and cover it with a dishcloth to keep the fruit flies away. Forget about them for two or three days. Don’t worry if you see some mold developing on top of the water – you can just scrape it off and dispose of it. It shouldn’t have any ill effect on your seeds.

After the three days are up, it’s time to separate your seeds from the liquid. Using a very fine strainer or cheesecloth, pour the liquid out and collect the seeds. At this point you can give them another quick rinse under water to try to get any lingering gel off. 

Grab a paper towel, or for my fellow zero-wasters, a cotton flour sack tea towel, and lay it out flat. Dump your seeds out on it and spread them out in a single layer to dry. You’ll want to make sure they are completely dried prior to storage, to prevent any mold buildup. At this point you should make a note of what variety you saved and the date. There’s nothing worse than going through all the effort of saving seeds just to forget what it was you saved!

Saving tomato seeds is really a lot simpler than you may think. And how cool is it to be selecting for desired traits and making your own little version of your favorite varieties!? Now go pick some tomatoes and save some seeds – this is the perfect time of year to do it!

Happy Growing!

Becca

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