How to Save Tomato Seeds

Learn how to save tomato seeds from open-pollinated tomato varieties with this easy guide.

By Staff
Published on April 13, 2015
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by Stephen L. Garrett

Grow your best tomatoes ever with Epic Tomatoes (Storey Publishing, 2014) by Craig LeHoullier. LeHoullier shares decades of experience growing and developing tomato varieties, with practical information as well as the stories and histories behind many tomatoes. Beautiful, full-color photos illustrate this comprehensive guide to successful tomato cultivation, from sowing to seed-saving. The following excerpt is from chapter 6, “Saving for the Future.”

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Epic Tomatoes.


Saving Seeds

The best time to save seeds from your open-pollinated tomato varieties is when the first tomatoes ripen. I use the first ripe tomatoes for seed saving to reduce the chances that the bees will have worked the flowers and cross-pollinated the seed in the tomato.

Tomatoes that are in edible ripe condition are best, allowing for the pairing of seed saving with eating, cooking, or preserving. Since the genetic material in every seed on every tomato of a particular plant (as long as it is a stable, non-hybrid variety) is the same, it isn’t necessary to use the most perfect specimens on a given plant. (The single exception to this is if the bees that visited the flower cross-pollinated it with another variety; seeds in that specific tomato would produce a hybrid of the two varieties.) The most important thing to watch for is that the tomatoes on a given plant are true to type — that they match your expectations from either the description or past experience.

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