Saving your Tomatoe seeds

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by jmsieglaff

Thanks a lot Carolyn, I appreciate it. I look forward to your write up down the road. In the meantime the tutorial I read through has helped me have a good idea of how to proceed.

I suppose the one question would be, in general, is there a certain depth the goop should be for fermentation or doesn't that really matter.

I will sacrifice the first couple fruits of the varieties I want to save and just process the entire tomato.

If you are going to use those 9 oz plastic glasses you'd want it about half full, but it's not just the depth that's important, it's also the consistency of the goop/

When I process seeds I take a fruit and with my thumbs split open a fruit and then just, again with my thumbs and fingers, drag out the innards directly into a container'

Depending on the variety and also the ratio of flesh to juice and other innard parts I can get a somewhat watery goop with just a few other pieces of flesh, and of course the seeds, but other times there's way more flesh pieces, less juice, and usually less seeds.

And when the latter occurs I take my fingers and smash the flesh pieces against the side of the container , stir the goop and if it looks ok, ok.

And if it's a new variety I've not grown before, I take a huge bite of each fruit and record taste in my databook which I'd have handy/ Lots of tomato stains on those databooks.

On the upside if I was processing fruits , ripe ones only for seeds, I'd usually have green stained hands but after getting covered with tomato juice and whatever, my hands would be perfectly clean.

Learned that from my father many years ago, that is, after we brought the tomatoes in baskets into the shed for sorting and packing for market, we ASAP went to the closest greenhouse which had an outside faucet and a tub for washing mud spattered produce, grab a rotten tomato or two and wash our hands vigorously, Never failed to remove the green stains.

Carolyn

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

On the upside if I was processing fruits , ripe ones only for seeds, I'd usually have green stained hands but after getting covered with tomato juice and whatever, my hands would be perfectly clean.

Learned that from my father many years ago, that is, after we brought the tomatoes in baskets into the shed for sorting and packing for market, we ASAP went to the closest greenhouse which had an outside faucet and a tub for washing mud spattered produce, grab a rotten tomato or two and wash our hands vigorously, Never failed to remove the green stains.

Carolyn

Carolyn, I just learned that this year from actually having incredibly grungy grubby yucky stained hands and a few quarts of bad tomatoes... that when I was cutting out the bad spots and tossing the rest in the blender (to put them in the freezer for later) that my hands were perfectly clean for a change when I got done. I was so excited. My hands are never "clean" at this time of year.

[jmsieglaff]

Thanks again for the info! My first batch is complete and drying. I've got three other batches just starting to get funky in the garage.

[Tomato Beth]

I have some Amish Paste seeds growing mold in my garage, too. I've never been so happy to see mold in my life!

[cjp1953]

Originally Posted by Beth Carlock

I have some Amish Paste seeds growing mold in my garage, too. I've never been so happy to see mold in my life!

I started this thread and happy it's still going.I picked up some Amish Paste seeds today on our trip to Amish country in Holmes County Ohio.Been wanting to try these for a while.Now I need to find a few other Black varieties.This will be my first time growing seeds for my garden.

[COMPOSTER]

Carolyn,

I would be very interested if you did the thread. The posts about saving seeds from the fruits of plants that have foliage disease could not have been more timely for me to read this year. Your experience and wisdom on seed saving would be greatly appreciated.

Glenn

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by COMPOSTER

Carolyn,

I would be very interested if you did the thread. The posts about saving seeds from the fruits of plants that have foliage disease could not have been more timely for me to read this year. Your experience and wisdom on seed saving would be greatly appreciated.

Glenn

Glenn, I appreciate your kind words, and yes, I still intend to do that thread on seed saving, but seed saving starts with how a person plants their tomatoes, makes decisions about how pure the seeds should be, how to do that which is a large topic, and then I guess ends up with how to process seeds.

Since it starts with how to space plants, and it'snow the end of the season, I don't think trying to do it now is the best time to do it.

Fact is, I can't do it now for several reasons which I'm not going to go into detail here. If I try to do it in one post that means I have to do it all at once, and fetching links for it is a bear.I prefer to to do it in MS WORD as I do my annual seed offer and that way I don't have to do it all at once, but there appears to be a glitch with that right now.

Have faith in me for I will do it, on my own time and that time is not now.

Carolyn

[bjbebs]

Thank you Carolyn for considering this. I would be interested in the whole process,
especially care of the plants to discourage cross pollination.