Next year's tomatoes?

[Michael Horowitz]

After repeated trips to the nursery over several weeks, I finally got my Roma and Beefsteaks in the ground. About four plants of each. To avoid being dependent on the nursery, I'm considering starting from seed (next year). Any reason I can't take seed from this years growth, dry them, then use them next year? If do-able, do I simply scoop out the seeds and let them dry? - Mike

[Rez]

Hybrids may not make the same variety as you started with (in fact that's generally a risk with a lot of plants) but I can tell you that tomatoes will volunteer just fine from randomly dropped seeds (recently I posted here re someone's yard that has been completely taken over by volunteer tomatoes, originally from seed).

I get volunteer watermelons in my yard all the time. People think you're strange when you have to mow around a randomly placed watermelon vine Last month I found a volunteer strawberry plant in my yard, probably because birds ate some of the veggie scraps that I feed to the ants. (We get large ants here that clean up any loose plant material for a good 30 yards from their nest, including weed seeds and sticks, not to mention that they kill grasshoppers and stink beetles, and despite apparently being in the fire ant family they're nonaggressive -- so I encourage 'em.)

If I were saving seeds, I think I'd let the tomato vine-ripen to the point of being overripe so the seeds are definitely mature, then scoop out and dry the seeds.

~REZ~

[FarmerDill]

If they are real Roma's and beefsteaks (Scarlet Ponderosa) then simply remove the seeds from a ripe tomato and wash and dry them. Lots of folks ferment fresh tomato seeds. does remove the gel from around them but simply dried and stored until spring works fine, Never had any germination problems. Hybrids will revert back (about half of them) to their parents generation. Particularly with older hybrids you can get some interesting results, many of the more modern hybrids are from inbred lines and you may not notice any deaviations in the F2 generation.

[dkra]

I grew SunSugar F1 in my yard last year and now have some healthy volunteer seedlings in its place. I wonder what the F2 will resemble? So far the plant's foliage looks exactly the same. The fruit may or may not be as good.

-- dkra