paperclips4u@hotmail.com
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Planting a store bought tomato.

Hey,

I was wondering if it was possible to bury a store-bought tomato (as in the fruit itself) and have it eventually grow.

Thank you,

Dillon

pd
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I don't see why not they certainly germinate after going through the system and ending up at the sewage works. But I would say your best bet is to remove them swill them around in a jar to remove the mush. It will be messy but eventually you should have some fairly clean seeds. Then sow them in a pot or tray at around 65F and hope they are viable.

paperclips4u@hotmail.com
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Great -- thank you very much. I will try to separate the seeds, as you said and hope for the best.

TZ -OH6
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No problem at all getting them to grow just like seed from any other tomato. My mother did it for years. The problem is that those are moslty hybrid varieties so what grows out of them will not be exactly like what was in the store (possibly a good thing, now that I think about it). I've heard that the red grape tomatoes (even though they are a hybrid) are pretty good about staying true to form when grown from store bought tomatoes.

You can simply take some seeds out, clean them off as much as possible and dry them, or go through the whole fermentation step to get clean seed. Fermentation is better for long storage, but for immediate planting of a few seeds it doesn't matter.

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hendi_alex
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My store bought tomato seeds and the seeds from home grown fruits sprout all the time in the compost. The only thing about planting the seeds from what are generally hybrids is that the fruit of the offspring often reverts back to that similar to one of the parents. Large hybrids will often give small salad types of tomatoes and so what you get from those seeds is most always a surprise.

paperclips4u@hotmail.com
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Interesting. Can somebody please explain to me what a hybrid is? I'm assuming it's some type of engineered plant, but does anybody have any more details? Why hybrids are produced, etc?

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hendi_alex
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Tomatoes breeders or corn breeders and others are always looking for a native variety that has some desirable characteristic such as a particular disease resistance. Perhaps they find an indigenous central American species that is resistant to a wilt disease. They cross that scruffy little tomato with something like better boy. Most of the seedlings will be of no value. But one out of a cross may have the size and flavor of the better boy, but also picks up the disease resistant trait of that mostly poor quality south American variety. That is a hybrid that consists of genes from a big slicer and from a small native species. In the selected plant, the dominant characteristics are from the wonderful slicing variety, but also the special trait is also picked up. Now maybe they call the new plant Better Boy II, patent the variety, and make a ton of money from it. If you cross that plant with itself or with some other variety, most of the ofspring will not be particularly special as they revert to something near one or the other of the parent plants, or of something in between.

TZ -OH6
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In the biological/scientific world a hybrid is the offspring from two different species, but in the gardening/agricultural world a hybrid is any first generation offspring from two different varieties of the same species (our parents would be considered different varieties and we would be called hybrids), for instance crossing Brandywine with Cherokee Purple would give you hybrid seed and a hybrid plant, but if you took seed from that hybrid it would not be considered hybrid. This cross pollinating is usually done by hand, which is why hybrid seed costs more.


Seed from tomato plant parents of the same variety or from self pollinated plants are termed "open pollinated". All "heirloom" tomatoes are open pollinated varieties that have been selected over several generations to breed true, also termed "stabilized". If you take seeds from a hybrid the genetic combinations from the original two parent varities segregate and you will get different types of plants (not stable).

An example of this would be crossing a regular leaf (RL) red cherry (all 3 dominant traits) with a pink potatoleaf (PL) beefsteak (all 3 recessive traits). The hybrid offspring (f1 generation) would be a red regular leaf cherry. The seed from those self pollinated fruits (F2 generation) would be the following combinations in known proportions:
Red, RL cherry
Red RL large tomato
Pink RL cherry
Pink RL large tomato
Red Potato leaf cherry
Red PL large tomato
Pink PL cherry
and finally
pink PL large tomato

None of these would be stable (except maybe the pink pl large) because there might still be combinations of dominant gene alleles hiding recessive alleles...seed from the Pink PL cherry could yield both cherry and large fruits, but if you grew it out several times taking seed from the same type each time the chances of an alternate combination showing up is progressively reduced to almost nothing after a handfull of generations.


Even if you had a hybrid of two similarly looking varieties you have different "flavor", "health", and "disease resistance" gene alleles that will segregate out when you grow seeds from it.


Because not all traits are completely dominant/recessive, the mixed alleles in hybrids allow them to produce more consitently under a wide varity of conditions, and the fruits tend to be more uniform in shape. Heirlooms (OPs) may produce much more than a hybrid one year and less the next, and more fruits may not be nice looking enough to sell to someone expecting grocery store/Hollywood perfection (not good if you are a farmer stuck with the same costs year after year).



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