Squeeze the juice and seeds from a tomato or two into a jar or custard cup. Cover loosely to reduce evaporation. Let the tomato juice rot for a couple of weeks (it will be really nasty). Wash the seeds in a fine-mesh tea strainer, and dry on a piece of filter paper or a paper towel. When completely dry, transfer to a little envelope and mark with the year and the variety.
Or, just leave some rotten tomatoes on the ground in your garden and the tomatoes will come up on their own next year :-)
Remove seeds from tomato. Add water. Let sit for a few days to a week. The resulting fermentation will remove the gelatinous covering of the tomato seeds and make them easier to handle. It will not damage the seeds. When it gets pretty scummy looking, dump them into a strainer and wash them off. Then put them on a paper towel to dry. Don't forget to label them.
".....What is the most productive method of saving tomato
When I was young we would just squeeze the seed and pulp onto a sheet of newspaper, let it dry then fold and store. When it came to planting we would sow with paper still on, that saved having to space the seed.
Nothing wrong with planting the newspaper along with the seed. However, unless you put the tomato seeds onto the newspaper to dry at wide spaced intervals you will be planting a clump of tomatoes. Tomatoes should probably be more than 18" apart (depending on variety). Also, a typical tomato produces far more seeds than the average home gardener wants. By separating the seeds you can plant just what you need and save the rest for future years. I generally mix several years worth of saved seed when starting tomatoes, just in case the most recent year's crop has a problem.
Tomatoes benefit from early starting and transplanting. By starting the saved seeds indoors you can get your tomatoes earlier. You can also select the strongest seedlings to plant. I generally transplant my tomatoes 3 times: seeding into a flat tray, transplanting into a 1" cell, then transplanting into a 4" pot, then transplanting into the field. The weaker tomato plants are discarded at each step. (I get tomatoes from my compost pile also, where the discards go).
dps replied "........Nothing wrong with planting the newspaper along with the seed. However, unless you put the tomato seeds onto the newspaper to dry at wide spaced intervals you will be planting a clump of tomatoes. Tomatoes should probably be more than 18" apart (depending on variety). .........."
Here in the UK we have to start our tomatoes in seed trays so seed spacing of half an inch is ample. Seeds move around easily when they are first put onto the paper, and you can always cut the paper
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