How to Save Tomato Seeds for Next Year

today we're going to be saving our tomato seeds to grow next year so many of you have asked for this over the past few months and i'm excited to finally bring it to you i'm going to go through step by step through the entire process so don't go anywhere so why even save seeds well to save money first of all you know if i buy a seed pack i know that i'll be able to save that seed and never have to buy that variety again it's not going to stop me from buying other varieties though that's for sure i get that seed catalog in my hand and literally have to really show some self-control a lot of people i've never done it myself participate in seed swaps and have a lot of fun with that so that might be another reason to do it sustainability is a big one you know just about every seed company sold out this year because of the pandemic and everything so who knows what's going to happen next year so it would be nice to at least have the seeds i grew this year to fall back on in case there's a shortage this coming year let me know in the comments if you guys had to deal with seed shortages this year if you didn't get some things that you wanted to or if you've been saving seeds for this reason or any other reason so one thing you have to know about when you're talking about seed saving is cross pollination and that can occur when either the wind blows some pollen from one tomato variety to another one's flower on another plant or insects pollinators bees anything lands on one tomato in that flower and takes that pollen to another tomato that's when cross pollination can occur and what that means is the seeds from this year's tomato may not grow this year's tomato might be very similar but it will have traits of both varieties in one tomato now that could be fun you could develop your own even better tasting variety but for a lot of us if we really like one variety then we want to make sure that the seeds we're saving this year grow the exact same one next year so there's a couple ways to do that only grow one variety and that's it so there's no chance of cross-pollination or if you grow more than one variety grow those two varieties a hundred yards apart at least now i don't know about you but i don't think i even have the space to do a hundred yard spacing between two different varieties of tomatoes and i definitely want to grow more than one variety so that's where these little babies come in these are blossom bags um actually they're wedding favor bags but they're also blossom bags i'm gonna put a link to these down below where you can get them from amazon they're really inexpensive now the way blossom bags work is before tomato flowers open you slip the bag over the blossoms and draw the string so it's so they're secure in there and what that's going to do is that is going to allow wind to still blow through this and help pollinate it it's not going to stop you from shaking the cage or the string or whatever you're growing them on to help the bees but it is not going to let the pollinators get near the flowers when they open and so that is going to protect this variety so that there's no cross-pollination therefore the tomatoes that grow from these flowers are going to produce seeds that produce the same variety that you grew this year next year once you've seen the flowers bloom inside here and you've shaken it to give it some help and then you see the flowers start to dry up and hopefully see a little baby tomato in there then you can take off the bag obviously this cannot grow inside this bag let alone three or four or however many blooms got pollinated so but you still want to remember what branch that was so take a piece of yarn or something and just make a little loose tie maybe a bow around that branch so you know when you harvest that tomato those are the ones that you want to save the seeds from so now that the tomato is harvested it's time to get the seeds out and unfortunately it's not as simple as just scooping out the seeds drying them out and planting them next season a lot of fruits and vegetables you can do that with tomatoes are one that you cannot so i'm going to show you a real easy way to make sure that these seeds that you take out of here are viable for next year so the first thing we have to do obviously is cut it open we have two choices when cutting it open usually you can slice it across the equator slice it this way or from top to bottom now for getting the seeds out the easiest way i have found is from top to bottom because the seed compartments if you will grow like this inside the tomatoes so if you slice this way you're going to cut across those compartments and have an easier job getting them out so first i'm just going to cut it in half first i'm going to core it just to get this core out of here okay so i'm going to cut it in half from top to bottom and then i'm going to cut it in wedges you can see the seed compartments right in there and you put your finger in and you're going to get seeds out so the next thing we need is some kind of container i'm using a glass jar it doesn't have to be a glass jar it can be a cup you're also going to need a coffee filter or paper towel and a rubber band and so all we're going to do is kind of take the spoon or your finger and scoop the seeds into the jar i just like to use my finger and it's okay if you get pulp in there or skin in there it's not going to matter i'll show you why in just a minute in fact it's pretty impossible to get the seeds in there without getting some of that each seed is encased in a little sack of gel a little sack of goo now this goo serves two purposes the the gel contains chemicals that inhibit germination until the seeds have a chance to find themselves a nice place to sprout it also protects the seed from the digestive tract of animals like rats because the tomato plant wants an animal to eat its seeds because that's what helps to spread the seeds further than the vicinity of the plant if there was no animal to eat it it would fall to the ground and they would sprout right there they want to get their seeds their dna far and wide and so each of these seeds because it's covered in gel it protects it from the digestive juices of the animal that eats it so a few days from now when it poops it out it's somewhere else and the seed has not been destroyed in fact it's been fermented in the gut of the animal and now it's ready to find a place to grow now that's a great plan in nature however when we're here trying to save these seeds these little jelly sacks are going to become a problem because if we just dried these seeds out that gel sac would actually keep moisture in and have a place for bacteria and fungus to grow and actually just kill the seed so we need to ferment this exactly the way it would be fermented inside of an animal we're not going to use digestive juices but we're going to fill this jar about three quarters of the way with water all right so the seeds are now in the water and we're just going to cover this up a little bit it needs to breathe but we also just want to cover it up so take the coffee filter or paper towel just put the rubber band around it we're going to let this sit in a cool dark place for two to three days now during the next two to three days the uh fermentation process is going to take the gel sex away they're gonna dissolve in the water and the viable seeds are gonna float to the bottom and everything else will float to the top so it'll be it'll be easy to separate the two when this is all finished now you don't want to leave it for more than two to three days or it's gonna start breaking down the seed itself and then the seeds won't be viable so after two to three days pour off the top and we're gonna take the seeds that are left we're gonna spread them on a paper plate a paper towel and make sure you keep these labeled throughout the process so you've gone to all this trouble to get the variety you want you want to know what variety that is so once they're spread out on a paper plate or paper towel you're going to leave them for another two to three days to get completely dried out you don't want any moisture left because that will cause bacteria to grow at that point you could put them into once they're completely dry you can put them into a paper envelope labeled of course seal it up and it'll be ready put the date on it as well so you know because these will last for more than one year they will last for a good two to three years without any degradation and viability after that every year that goes by you're going to get just a less less and less germination rate from your seeds but they will last for several years so make sure you put the date and the name on there now you can also store them in a plastic bag you want to make sure though that if they're stored in a plastic bag that they were definitely 100 dried out before they were put in there because you don't want bacteria to grow and kill your seeds i use a paper envelope that way i don't have to worry if there's a little moisture left it will be absorbed by the envelope so that's as difficult as it gets i hope you guys learned something i hope you enjoyed the video if you did hit the thumbs up button and i will see you guys on friday have a great rest of your week you

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 46,233

Rating: 4.9644246 out of 5

Keywords: save tomato seeds, save tomato seeds for next year, save tomato seeds ferment, how to save tomato seeds for next season, how do you save tomato seeds, how to save tomato seeds without fermenting, can i save tomato seeds to plant, how to save tomato seeds for planting, how to save cherry tomato seeds, how to save heirloom tomato seeds, how to save and store tomato seeds, can you save hybrid tomato seeds, how to save your tomato seeds, Save tomato seeds for enxt year

Id: _K9OPQsXyNg

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020