How to easily collect tomato seeds after harvest?

in your garden is a brilliant idea, especially since it saves you from eating the tasteless varieties sold in stores. If you started this year, consider saving some tomato seeds from your harvest for next season. It's easy and quick, but there are still some precautions to take into account! Let's see how to do it.

When should you collect the tomato seeds?

If you want to reproduce your own tomato seeds, we do not recommend collecting those from the first and last fruits of the season. The first fruits are generally smaller and the last ones risk being affected by downy mildew, one of the most widespread cryptogamic diseases on tomatoes. Another reason not to start too late: be sure that all the fruits reach maturity because the seeds of green tomatoes are, very often, still sterile. 

To avoid any worries, I generally collect the seeds of my best tomatoes between mid-August and mid-September. For me, this is the best time to carry out this operation since the fruits are generally healthy and of very good size. Remember that a good selection of seeds is a very important criterion since they will contain the characteristics of the tomato from which they come.

Which tomatoes to choose for this operation?

To recover the sprouts, you absolutely must pay great attention to the choice of fruits you are going to select. To begin, the chosen fruit must be ripe, as previously stated. It is necessary that it reaches maturity so that it “bursts” (or almost) in your hands without you exerting strong pressure. Only when this condition is met can you be sure that the tomato is fully ripe and contains large quantities of future seeds. 

Keep in mind that there is no point in collecting the seeds from all fruits of the same variety. To take a good sample, you should instead try to choose only one fruit per species. Since he will represent the rest of his lineage, try to select the most beautiful and mature of them. 

Caution : avoid selecting seeds from a hybrid plant. They are generally referred to as F1 on commercially available seed packets. Even if you might think that it is advantageous to plant them in the garden because of their better resistance to diseases, you should still be aware that they risk causing very uncertain results the following year. Clearly, by harvesting tomato seeds from an F1 plant, you risk obtaining plants of poor quality the following year or whose characteristics are not at all identical to those of the "parents". It's a bit of a lottery so prefer to buy farmer's seeds, which are completely reproducible without any unpleasant surprises.

What are the steps to follow to collect tomato seeds?

Now that you have all the information you need to select the ideal fruit, here's what you need to do to collect its seeds. The first thing to do for this purpose is to cut the chosen fruit in half using a knife. After sectioning, you will notice the part containing the seeds. 

Then use a small spoon to collect the seeds. At this level, you do not have to take seeds only. You can collect everything including the juice which you will eliminate using a Chinese strainer. Then wash them under the tap.

Then put all the seeds as well as the gelatin surrounding them in a bowl and add a little water. After this step, wait for approximately 2 or 3 days for fermentation. Generally, it depends on the temperature to which the bowl is subjected. The warmer the ambient heat, the faster the fermentation.

Wait until a sort of whitish layer develops on the surface of the water. The appearance of this layer is of capital importance, in that it eliminates certain bacteria. 

Once fermentation is complete, you can remove the small layer that had formed on the surface. Then, remove the remaining gelatin from the seeds by washing them. 

Caution : the seeds must not stay in water for too long otherwise they risk germinating. As you can see in the image below, many seeds have germinated. Unfortunately, heading to the trash since they will no longer be productive next year.

All you need to do now is dry the seeds so you can store them for a new harvest. However, it is better to avoid paper towel when drying, because it then becomes complicated to separate the seeds. The best thing would be to use a very dry cloth to spread them on it. 

Then place them in a small paper bag, and store them away from light in a cooler room, with a humidity level that is not too high. For my part, they spend the winter in the garage :)