Lets try this seed saving thing again

[SueCT]

Carolyn, I have a small garden and want to try a few hundred varieties, plus the standards I want every year, so 4 or more plants of one variety is difficult. Although in order to preserve my beloved EML I would be willing to do it occasionally. This year I have 2 but with a lot of foliage diseases and although the ML look better than some, production has not been huge. I only used one tomato because that is all I had ripe at that time. I plan to save from several tomatoes, however. I have 2 more finishing ripening now. Do I need to grow 4 in row even if I bag next year? Unless I enlarge the garden significantly, I will be growing fewer plants next year because I think over crowding has contributed to my foliage problems. Also, I can not give up my tomatoes to seed production only, I must remove the seeds and eat the remaining tomato.

So the fact that the oxidative method has not been tested, means in your opinion the fermentation method is better for preventing disease? I do want to not only decrease the chances of disease in my own garden, but also if I share them with anyone.

[Cole_Robbie]

Just give them a hot water bath if disease prevention is your top concern, whether your ferment or oxidize.

http://www.highmowingseeds.com/SB-Se...s-Control.html

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...Treatment.html

Oxy Clean is sodium percarbonate, which dissolves into hydrogen peroxide when mixed with water. It's an oxidizing agent, similar to trisodium phosphate that commercial seed companies use, which is known to kill disease.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by SueCT

Carolyn, I have a small garden and want to try a few hundred varieties, plus the standards I want every year, so 4 or more plants of one variety is difficult. Although in order to preserve my beloved EML I would be willing to do it occasionally. This year I have 2 but with a lot of foliage diseases and although the ML look better than some, production has not been huge. I only used one tomato because that is all I had ripe at that time. I plan to save from several tomatoes, however. I have 2 more finishing ripening now. Do I need to grow 4 in row even if I bag next year? Unless I enlarge the garden significantly, I will be growing fewer plants next year because I think over crowding has contributed to my foliage problems. Also, I can not give up my tomatoes to seed production only, I must remove the seeds and eat the remaining tomato.

So the fact that the oxidative method has not been tested, means in your opinion the fermentation method is better for preventing disease? I do want to not only decrease the chances of disease in my own garden, but also if I share them with anyone.

If you go back up and read where I said the ORIGINAL suggstion was to grow 4 plants in a row, etc, and that was supposed to lessen the chance of cross pollination but I smiled b'c nothing at all was said how far apart from the rows on either side of the row in question should be.

I then went on to say that usually just two plants were Ok and how to save seeds from those two.

And so yes, IMO since no data is available to indicate how well oxidative methods do remove pathogens on the seed surface while we do have data for fermention, that fermentation might be best.

BUT, it also depends on WHICH pathogens affect your tomato plants, whether foliage ones, which I think would be most likely in CT or soilborne ones such as Fusarium, Verticillium, etc.

You said you thought your foliage diseases were due to the plants being too close together, could be, but the major reason is if the pathogens for the foliage infections are prevalent in any one season since they are transmitted by wind and embedded in raindrops. You can also use a good antifungal to help prevent the bacterial Foliage diseases, but of course can do nothing for the bacterial ones.

And then there are the ones that are found only in the seed endosperm, I can't remember if I posted about those here or in another thread here, but those would include all viruses to date, viroids and Bacterial Spot and bacterial Speck. And only hotwater treatment can do that and I know I posted elsewhere about tyhat as did many others in the same thread, not something done easily at home.

About bagging blossoms. I tried once at it was a huge failure but with many hundreds ofplants out there it was also impossible to do so.

So I never bagged blossoms, self pollenization is the norm and I can think of less than 10 varieties where I offered X pollinated seeds, from feedback. And it's one of the reasons it's important to save seeds from MANY fruits of a variety since it dilutes out any crossed seeds from the few blossoms that might have been crossed. Well I remember a variety where I'd saved about2,000 seeds I was SSE listing and I had sent out seeds for maybe 1500 of them before even one crossed one was reported.

But how pure one wants seeds to be depends on what they want to use them for as in home use, making seed offers, and on and on.

Carolyn

[SueCT]

Thank you. Mostly I have foliage diseases such as early blight, Septoria sometimes, and only once did I have bacterial spec and it was in a container not my garden. That plant was destroyed and the soil discarded. It has been a bad season for foliage diseases around here and since there is an obvious increase after a rain, I do believe much of it is air born. However, lack of good air circulation can't help. Oddly, I have 3 rows of plants in my garden and the middle row go hit the worst, so I did think the crowding was contributing. Those plants were so bad they collapsed and had to be removed, the small fruit ripened as the plant faded, but they never got any large fruit. The next worst was Brandywine OTV for some reason. I am using Daconil but did not start until I saw a problem starting on multiple plants so it was not as effective as it would have been if I had used it as a preventative. I really prefer organic but end up buckling and using the Daconil when I think the crop is threatened. Fortunately I have not ever needed to use anything else, but with better growing practices I hope not to need it as often. So, about all I know to do is use the best growing practices I can to reduce disease, like allowing better air circulation and removing infected leaves. Using a method to decrease the chance of seed born diseases might be a small thing, but at least if those diseases show up I will know I did what little I could to prevent them.

[Starlight]

I have a question about dried seed color. I don't know if some of this seed I dried is good or not? The containers that developed like black mold instead of the white I am used to seeing, well those seeds when dried are a whole lot darker that seed I have always seed from the white fungal mat.

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Starlight

I have a question about dried seed color. I don't know if some of this seed I dried is good or not? The containers that developed like black mold instead of the white I am used to seeing, well those seeds when dried are a whole lot darker that seed I have always seed from the white fungal mat.

Sometimes the fungal mat is blacker. If the seeds look clean, and greyish, I think you will be OK. I always get rid of seeds that have black on them. They would probably grow, but who wants to trust it?

[Starlight]

Thanks Ginger! : ) Yes, I look through my seeds several times to try and make sure I don't miss any that have even a touch of black or look questionable. They hit the trash can. Just wasn't sure how things are supposed to look with these black type tomatoes . Appreciate the help.

[Father'sDaughter]

No matter what variety I ferment, I almost always get a blue-ish/black fungal mat. I don't think the color of it has any bearing on whether the seeds are good or not.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

No matter what variety I ferment, I almost always get a blue-ish/black fungal mat. I don't think the color of it has any bearing on whether the seeds are good or not.

I agree since which fungi and bacteria fall into the container is deterined by what's up there in the air and we have no control over that at all.

Different fungi can have spores that are black, green, beige, etc.

And it's never made a difference in the color of the seeds, at least for me, for the many thousands of fermentations that I've set up over the decades.

The only time that I ever got dark brown or black colored seeds was when I accidentally let the containers dry down, and then by testing for germination the dark brown ones were OK, but not so much the black ones,so I didn't even bother to test them for germination after my first test runs on germination.

The good news is that seldom did I ever let containers go dry, but in the early Fall when I was back teaching I couldn't get to the old farm every day to check, and that's when it would happen.

Carolyn

[Starlight]

Thanks all. I think too what I may have done was let some ferment too long. Neighbor had some major surgery and I stayed with her all day as her hubby didn't want her left alone while he was at work and I kinda forgot about some of the containers.

I'll give them a germ test just to make sure. : )

[SueCT]

OK, I have probably let them go longer than it should take but I can finally clearly see a whitish fungal mat starting around the edges of the liquid surface and some black spotting on the sides of the container inside. The black does not thrill me after the above discussions but it does not appear to be on the seeds. Can I assume it is done and proceed, or should the fungal mat cover the surface of the liquid? Most of the seeds are on the bottom, but a few are still slightly suspended in the bottom 1/4 inch of liquid. Even the many of the seeds on the bottom, though, are still a little suspended in that they are on their sides not lying flat on the bottom of the container.

[AlittleSalt]

A fungal mat does not have to happen.

Those seeds in your pictures are what you want to see. It's time to dry them

[ginger2778]

They look done to me.

[ContainerTed]

The second and third pictures in post #41 are what you're looking for. The seeds are on the bottom of the container. They are no longer attached to lighter material (like gel sacs) and are not floating on the surface. Putting a little bit of water in the container helps to keep the liquid thinner and the seeds falling to the bottom more quickly.

This is just my own theory, but I think thinner liquid in the jar allows the liquid to get "closer" to the seed shell and work on those pathogens that may be clinging to those cute hair-like protrusions. Swirling the liquid occasionally keeps the "pathogen killers" more evenly dispersed. This means all the seeds get cleaned the same amount at the same time.

[SueCT]

Well, here we are, 153 Estlers Mortgage Lifter seeds. They look healthy but we shall see. I didn't have any uncoated plates so I had to use this one. Separating them with a toothpick was a little labor intensive, lol. Not my favorite part but it did give a chance to count them. Glad I didn't have to do more than that at one time. I have since picked several more large ML tomatoes, just shy of a pound each, so there will be lots more coming. I think I will mix several tomatoes together to ferment next time.