Seed Saving.

[Farmer Matt]

When does everyone start to save seeds? Is it all season, middle or the end.

Thanks, Matt

[TZ-OH6]

I start right away because even though I bag blossoms I don't have 100% success so I also save seeds fom unbagged early season fruits which have less cross pollination here.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by TZ-OH6

I start right away because even though I bag blossoms I don't have 100% success so I also save seeds fom unbagged early season fruits which have less cross pollination here.

And with unbagged blossoms I save seed only from late maturing fruits.

I think each person saving seeds from unbagged blossoms needs to know when the highest probablility occurs for those insects that can be involved in Cross pollination, mainly those tiny halictid bees, aka sweat bees that are involved most of the time.

In my area I've always seen the highest cross pollination rates with early fruits, so I think it's a good idea to find out what the situation is in your area.

What's even more important when saving seeds from unbagged blossoms is to never save seeds from just one fruit from one plant, better to save seeds from many fruits from one plant, even better to do the same with two plants, etc.

That way you dilute out any possible cross pollinated seeds. In the past I've saved seeds and distributed 100's of them for a single variety with my SSE listings or here with my seed offer and no X pollinated seeds have shown up until several hundreds of seeds have been distributed.

[travis]

Plant a few ornamental peppers (really any kind of pepper that will thrive in a pot) and set them near the tomato bed but still several yards from the tomato bed. Daily watch closely for little bees to gather pollen from the pepper blooms. Most of these bees will be tiny and shiny, not like honey bees. When you see those bees gathering pollen from the peppers, that's the most likely time they also will be working your tomato blossoms. It varies from zone to zone because of environmental conditions and pollinator species. The reason you use the pepper plants is that most tomato pollenators will be even more attracted to the pepper blossoms, or so I've noticed, and seem to gather there in greater numbers and more frequently.

[kd3]

I have been following advice received from Grungy who has a cross pollination rate of less than 1%, I mark fruit that sets when the bees are not present, which for me here in Zone 5 appears to be early fruit set. Here is an cut and paste from her email to me:

If you have a break between when the orchard (solitary) bees and when the bumble bees are really busy (here, again it occurs starting around the first week of August), is when I mark the tomato that are setting and use those for tomato seed production. The two above groups of bees are the only ones that will fertilize tomatoes as the blossoms are too difficult for most bee varieties to get into.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by kd3

I have been following advice received from Grungy who has a cross pollination rate of less than 1%, I mark fruit that sets when the bees are not present, which for me here in Zone 5 appears to be early fruit set. Here is an cut and paste from her email to me:

If you have a break between when the orchard (solitary) bees and when the bumble bees are really busy (here, again it occurs starting around the first week of August), is when I mark the tomato that are setting and use those for tomato seed production. The two above groups of bees are the only ones that will fertilize tomatoes as the blossoms are too difficult for most bee varieties to get into.

I think I said above that it's the Halictid Bees, aka sweat bees, that do the most Coss pollination and they are so tiny it's hard to see them. If you go to Google and enter SOuthern Exposure Seed Exchange you'll find an excellent article writtten by Dr. Jeff McCormack on NCP ( natural cross pollination) which is an excellent article and well worth reading where he discusses which bees are most inportant in NCP.

To reiterate, each person needs to determine which bees are present in the highest amount that can lead to NCP and then do some testing by saving seeds from early fruits and late fruits of the same variety and looking at the results. it's good to use a PL variety with the assumption that most around the test plant are RL's b/c then you can tell ASAP when seedlings come up if NCP has occurred b'c those will be the RL seedings.

My NCP rate runs around 5% which is darn good and it means that of seed saved from 100 varieties on average 5 will be crossed, and there have been many years when subequent results have shown that 0 NCP occurred.

[kd3]

Thanks Carolyn, I believe this would be the article: http://www.southernexposure.com/isol...omatoes.p.html

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by kd3

Thanks Carolyn, I believe this would be the article: http://www.southernexposure.com/isol...omatoes.p.html

Yes that's it. He's changed it slightly since I last read it, but I still think it's a very good article.

[Mischka]

Images of Halictid aka sweat bees attached.