Saving Seeds

[TZ -OH6]

I've been trying out modifications on the way I prepare seeds and think I've come up with a fairly clean way to "ferment" seeds.

The main point of fermenting tomato seeds is to rot the gel off of them so you can save a large amount of fluffy clean seeds. My mother would simply put individual gel covered seeds onto a peice of plastic to dry and then scraped them off and store them until the next year. Some people put them on a napkin to dry and then tear the seed/paper and plant that, so it's not rocket science to save tomato seeds. Other people use household cleanser to scour and chemically dissolve the gel away for quick seed processing. I'm not into using cleansing product chemicals unless I have to, so I don't do this

Basic fermentation involves simply squishing the seeds out of the tomato into a lidded container, adding a bit of water and letting the gunk sit in a warm place to rot for a couple of days, which is what most people do. You often end up with a thick mat of mold growing on top of the stinky primordial soup at the end, which makes cleaning the seeds fairly unpleasant. My way seems to avoid the fungal mat and consitently gives me clean seeds in 3 days at room temperature.


Get yourself a lidded container, I like clear 16 oz deli containers because I can swirl the contents and see how free of gell the seeds are.

Mark the variety of tomatoe on a small peice of card (I use peices of paper plates) using pencil. This will go in with the seeds so you know what you have.

Place a wire strainer over the container, halve the tomato and squish and scrape the seeds into the strainer. Using a rubber spatula squish and smear the gel, juce and pulp through the strainer into the container. This breaks up the gel coat on the seeds a bit and I think speeds up the process.

Set the container to the side.

Using the kitchen sink sprayer, spray off the seeds and pick out any large chunks of tissue. Place the seeds into the container. At this point I spit into the container to add enzymes, yeast and bacteria to jump start the fermentation process (obviously if you have just brushed your teeth this isn't going to help much). This sounds nasty, but doing it has made fermentation time faster and more consistent for me.

Then I add very warm, but not hot water until the container is 1/2 full, drop the tag in and put the lid on. Put the container some place warm for at least 3 days (under good conditions seeds may be ready after 2 days). In the lab, standard operating proceedure is to incubate bacteria and most fungi at human body temp (99F/37C) for maximal growth. If you don't have any place "warm", room temp will do, but avoid keeping them outside at night or in cooler air conditioned areas. I swirl the containers once a day to sink floating seeds.

Seeds are done when they clump together closely after swirling. If gel is still present the seeds will not pack together when they settle. A clear container makes determining this much easier.

When seeds are finished fill the container nearly full with water, wait a few seconds for the seeds to settle and then pour off the liquid and floaters. Remove the tag so it does not get destroyed when you spray the seeds off in your wire strainer. Some people dip the clean seeds in 5%-10% bleach, or hydrogen peroxide. With the bleach you should rinse again with water befor drying. This is not necessary with peroxide. I don't bother with bleach because I save seed from healthy plants and fruits.

Dump the seeds onto a paper plate, blot with a folded paper towel, fluff and spread out the seeds and let sit for a couple of days to dry. Write the name of the variety on the paper plate. Unclumping the seeds by rolling them between your fingers is easiest when they are partially dry (a few hours after you set them out to dry). They stick much more tenaciously when fully dry.

Which tomaotes are best? For heirloom/open pollinated varieties there is no significant genetic variability present unless the plant from an accidental cross, so you won't be improving the next generation by picking the biggest and the best. You will be preserving the status quo by doing this though, and thus ensure that you get the same thing next year. Fruit from a sickly plant can be genetically inferior if that plant was inferior because it was an accidental cross. Judge quality by the overall plant, not by the look of an individual fruit. If you save seeds from hybrids do not expect to get the same thing in the next generation. Offspring from hybrid plants are no closer genetically than human siblings. Offspring from heirloom-open pollinated varieties are more or less genetic clones of the parent plant and of each other.

Tomatoes can and do self pollinate, but bee activity (bumble bees and tiny halictid bees,... not honey bees) increases pollination and fruit set significantly. This also increases the probability of crossed seed from pollen delivered by the bee from another plant. My data this year from ten first fruits (before high pollinator activity) shows 3 out of 10 were cross pollinated. Of the three fruits the highest incidence of crossed seed was 12%. This was before the bees became active so I suspect mid and late season fruits to have a higher incidence of crossed seeds. You can go to the bridal section of Walmart, Target etc and buy net sachettes and use those to bag blossoms to keep the bees off of the flowers.


Hope this helps.