Saving Tomato Seeds—The Best and The Blightless

I’m finally getting my own tomatoes and they are SO GOOD.

I got all these heirloom tomatoes from The Friends Sale this Spring.  My indeterminate tomato crop is a mixture of cherry and slicer tomatoes.  Some are doing better than others.  My favorite is an orange one, about the size of a tennis ball.  I definitely want this one in my garden next year.  The only problem is that I am not really sure what it is.  The best solution to this problem is to save the seed and forget about labeling it.  I’ll call it “That Tasty Orange One”.

I can think of three great reasons to save seeds.

Saving seeds saves money.  A packet of seeds or a hot house start cost more than the free seeds I save from year to year.

Saving seeds allows me to build a pallet of my favorite varieties of vegetables.  I can’t always rely on being able to find them in seed catalogs or start sales.

Saving seeds insures that I’ll have a selection of varieties that do well in my garden.  I can save “the best and the blightless”.  A tomato that is blight resistant is well worth the “trouble” of saving seed.

I have saved tomato seeds before, only to learn that I hadn’t done it correctly.  It still worked and the paste tomato plants I started from those seeds are the best in the garden this year.  I just decided to do it correctly.

So I have a cup of tomato seeds fermenting on the windowsills with a big “DO NOT THROW AWAY” sign pasted to it.  We’ll see what happens.  The worst threat to my success is always my husband.  Fermenting tomato seeds surely look destined for the trash to him.  Hopefully he’ll remember the pea incident from earlier in the summer and heed my sign to back off.

To learn more about saving tomato seeds, see http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/seedsave/2002084456024410.html.