344 Q&A - Tomato Seed Saving? Seeding Mulched Area?

In this episode of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, Fred Hoffman and Master Gardener Gail Pothour discuss saving tomato seeds.  They address the question of whether saved tomato seeds will produce the same tomato variety and provide tips for ensuring seed purity. The conversation covers topics such as flower structure, pollination, isolation techniques, and seed fermentation.

Answering another question, Debbie Flower and Fred discuss the best method for sowing annual flower seeds on mulched soil.

Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.

Pictured: Organza bag protecting/isolating the flower of a Jimmy Nardello pepper (source: Wikimedia Commons)

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HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link, good until Oct. 31, 2024)

Organza bags for isolating tomato flowers
Seed Savers Exchange - Exserted tomato flower parts explained
Book: The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving

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Chapters

• 0:23 Q&A Saving Tomato Seeds?
• 9:52 Q&A Seeding Mulched Area?

Transcript

344 Q&A tomato seeds TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred

Welcome back to the Tuesday edition of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. Unlike the Friday edition, we're dedicating the Tuesday podcast to answering your garden questions. Stay tuned to find out how you can get your garden question into the program. So come on, let's do this.

Q&A - HOW TO SAVE OPEN-POLLINATED TOMATO SEEDS

Farmer Fred

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics Podcast. We are with Gail Pothour at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It's an Open Garden Day on this Saturday in June. And we get a question from Marie in Sherwood, Oregon. And she says, “Have I wasted my time? I've saved seeds from one of my friend's tomatoes. It's a saucing tomato. I started the seeds, planted several and gave several away. I thought you could save seeds from heirloom open pollinated tomatoes that weren't hybrid and reliably get the same tomato. Was I wrong in my thinking? What are the chances that I will get the same tomato?”

 And Gail, the first question I have for you is, please pronounce the name of this tomato. I can't. 

Gail Pothour

Well, I took Spanish, not Italian, but their close. It's Cuore Di Bue. And sadly enough, I have grown this in the past and it's spelled Cuore Di Bue.

Farmer Fred

I always would say, quah -du -bleh, but I like yours better.  I may have messed that up. All right, so, can Marie save her seeds and get that Cuore Di Bue tomato, whatever, again? 

Gail Pothour

Quite possibly, but it depends. 

Farmer Fred

That's my favorite answer. 

Gail Pothour

I know. I use that a lot. What you need to look for is the flower structure of that particular plant because typically tomatoes have what's called an inserted stigma. It's the flower, and in that anther cone, that yellow cone around the petals, there's the female parts. And in a lot of tomatoes, that is short and so it's completely inside that anther cone and it self -pollinates itself. But on some tomato flowers, that is exserted. It means it sticks out, it protrudes, so it is able to be pollinated with other insects. I see black carpenter bees on my tomatoes a lot. What you might want to do, and it's what I do at home, is if I don't really care, I'll let it do what it's going to do and I'll harvest the tomato and I'll save the seed and see what I get. But if I really want to be sure that I get it true, if I'm going to be giving the seeds to someone or if it's a rare variety, I will bag the flowers before they open. So I have little organza bags, they're big, and I'll put it over the flower cluster before it opens up. And then once it's flowered, then I can take that off and I will put a ribbon or something on that stem so I know that's the special one. You just won't know until you look at the flower structure, if it's going to cross or not. 

Farmer Fred

Use that word again you used, exserted. 

Gail Pothour

Exserted, as opposed to inserted. It means it's protruding. You have pretty good chances that if you don't have a lot of insects around, it's not gonna matter if you isolate your tomatoes, maybe you won't have to worry about it. I typically will save seed from a tomato once each year, a different variety each year. And the one I want to save are about 20 feet away from the rest of my tomatoes. And in between that, I'll have pole beans growing up or melons on trellises as something to kind of disperse the pollen. The bees or the other insects will go from one tomato plant and then before they get to my isolated one, they will maybe stop at the bean. So you can do that. You can isolate them by distance. 

Farmer Fred

You can also put up almost a, not a windbreak, but you know, other plants. If you don't want to do that, how far apart should you plant tomatoes to help ensure possible isolation? 

Gail Pothour

I think 10 to 20 feet is probably good. If you don't want to isolate them, then just bag them. But look at the flower structure first and see if it's one that has the stigma that sticks out that can cross-pollinate. And it's not only bees, but there's syrphid flies and other insects that can also do it as well. 

Farmer Fred

And you'd be bagging them, as you mentioned, for a very short period of time. 

Gail Pothour

Right. And you do it before the flower open. So you see the little flower cluster is still in a bud stage. That's when you put the bag over it, cinch it up so that insects couldn't get in. And then once the flowers have opened and you see that there's little fruit on it, then take the bag off. Now, commercial companies that are selling their seed, they need to be sure that it's really pure. So for instance, Seed Savers Exchange, they will isolate a thousand feet, a quarter mile, depending on what it is they're saving. Home gardeners can't do that. I find it's just easier to do the distance if you can, but bag them. That will do it. 

Farmer Fred

What about using insect netting? Would that be effective?  

Gail Pothour

That one should work too. I wouldn't use anything that's got large holes because even small insects could get in there. And I've heard that tomatoes could get pollinated if the pollen is in the wind. So you want something that's pretty fine. But insect netting should work. Screening would work, such as the organza bags that I'm using. Agribon floating row cover, you could cut a square of that and put that around and tie it at the bottom of the stem. You know, if you don't really care, you take your chances and you could get something. Pretty wonderful, maybe? 

Farmer Fred

Yeah. So this is really a two -year process because you grow a tomato for, let's say, the first time and you go, “wow, I really like that tomato. I think I'll save the seeds from it.” No, maybe what you better do is pay attention to the flower in the second year and construct that obstacle course you talked about as well as putting taller growing plants on screens nearby. 

Gail Pothour

Well, you could do it the first year because I'm growing a tomato now. This is my first year growing this particular variety and I want to save seed from it. We've got about the third cluster of flowers. I didn't think about it until just recently, and so I thought, okay, I want to save seeds. So I found a cluster that hadn't opened yet. I bagged it. And so I will save the seeds from the fruit of those flowers. I will ferment them. You typically do that with tomatoes. You'll want to scrape the seed into a little jar or something with the juice, let them ferment for a week or two, they'll get kind of stinky and a white mold on it and that gets rid of the germination inhibitor that's on the seed. And I've heard that can also get rid of some diseases. 

Farmer Fred

You're basically just soaking them in water? 

Gail Pothour

Well actually I'm just soaking them in the juice from the tomato. You could add a little bit of water. Anyway, I would do it outside in the shade because it stinks. I wouldn't do it in the house.

Farmer Fred

But then you save those seeds, dry them out, and then next year plant them. So you won't know until the next year if you've got what you intended to get. So as Gail says, Marie, the answer is “it depends”. But pay attention to that flower. In the show notes we'll have a link to that Seed Savers Exchange page you were quoting about where you can see what an exserted flower looks like.

Gail Pothour

Exserted flower increases the chances that it will get cross-pollinated. And you might want to even have a hand lens or something. Some of them are really obvious they stick out a sixteenth of an inch some of them are not so obvious and so you just want to take a real close look at that flower structure. But as I say, if you don't really care and probably 90% of the time it would come true anyway. You just never know when it's gotten crossed. But I have a particular variety that for me I am going to take extra special care, it's a very special tomato. And so when I save seed from that next year, I will take every precaution that I will get true seeds. 

Farmer Fred

I guess another option, too, is if you have a big enough cage over that tomato plant, generally they will flower before they get too sprawling or you can just cut it back so it remains inside the cage, then you could  just cover the cage with something. 

Gail Pothour

Right, and that's what they do. I have a book from Seed Savers Exchange and it shows a lot of pictures of how they are isolating different crops, whether it's squash or tomatoes or whatever, and that's what they've done. They've actually put the fabric over the entire cage and made a cage. Now on things that need to have insect pollination, they then introduce insects, but for tomatoes that would work just fine, just cover the whole cage. 

Farmer Fred

Tomatoes are a wind-pollinated plant, so you can go by and shake the cage every now and then if you want. 

Gail Pothour

Yeah, that helps. In fact, if you see bumblebees or carpenter bees on the flower, they call it buzz pollinating. They'll kind of vibrate the flower so that the pollen inside those anther cones will pollinate the flower before it even opens up. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, it's amazing how effective that is, if you have some sort of a little old vibrating device. When I was growing tomatoes in the greenhouse over the winter and they needed wind pollination, I would just hold that little vibrating device, I think it was an old electric toothbrush. I would hold it right next to the flower and you can see the cloud of pollen come up. 

Gail Pothour

Yeah, the pollen's really fine and that's why if you have a particular variety of tomato that has that protruding or exserting stigma, that pollen, if it's in a windy location, it could cross -pollinate. So yeah, you just got to be careful if it's one that you really want to be sure you're going to come true to type.

“Exserted Stigma”, that was the name of my band in high school. We learned a lot from Gail Pothour. I learned something new today about tomato flowers and Marie, I bet you did too. So go ahead and start saving those tomatoes, but take those precautions. Gail, thank you. 

Gail Pothour

You're welcome, Fred.

Q&A - HOW TO PLANT SEEDS IN A MULCHED GARDEN

Farmer Fred

We like to answer your garden questions here. There are a lot of ways for you to get your question in. You can go to speakpipe.com, yell at your computer and it magically gets to me. Speakpipe.com/GardenBasics. You can give us a call. We have a number. 916 -292 -8964. 916 -292 -8964. Email, sure, send it to fred at farmerfred .com. Leave a question at our homepage as well, gardenbasics .net

or on social media, on Facebook at Get Growing with Farmer Fred or Farmer Fred Hoffman on Instagram. 

We get a question from Utah, from Brett, who says, “Hi Fred and Debbie. Thanks for putting out an awesome podcast. I love listening to it while I work in the garden.  I've taken all the grass out of my front yard and I've been creating an English cottage garden in its place. This year, I'd like to direct sow some annual flower seeds. I've got two to three inches of wood chip mulch on the ground. Most of the annual seeds seem to need some sunlight to germinate and they're pretty tiny. What is the best method to sow those seeds on mulched soil? Should I rake back the mulch to expose the bare dirt and wait until the flowers germinate and grow a couple of inches before replacing the mulch? Would the seeds germinate if I just cast them on top of the mulch?”  Well, Brett, I would hope that the seed packet would have some pretty specific instructions on how to do it for that particular seed. America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower is here, what do you think? 

Debbie Flower

First of all, I commend Brett for having used mulch to protect his soil while it's not being planted, because that's a very positive thing to do. But to plant seeds of annuals in it, I would rake back the mulch that is there, exposing the soil underneath. Rough up that soil, put some ridges in that soil below using a hand tine fork or something just to rough it up. Seeds are like wood in a fireplace. That wood needs to nestle up to another piece of wood in order for fire to occur. A standalone piece of wood is difficult to get to burn, but you put a second piece of wood on top that's seasoned correctly and off goes your fire. Seeds need to be up against the soil like two logs, seed to soil.

And they need to be kept moist. So then you need to cover the seed. If they need light to germinate, I would cover with about a quarter of an inch of vermiculite. Vermiculite is expanded mica. Mica is a type of rock. Vermiculite is very shiny and it allows the light, it reflects light from piece to piece to piece and it gets the light down into the seeds. And I only know that the quarter inch works because I taught this to students. I told them just to put a really thin layer down and somebody did a quarter of an inch and darn if their seeds didn't germinate, too. So you can put about a quarter of an inch over the seed, less if you feel comfortable with that. And then you're gonna have to water very gently because drops of water can dislodge the seed. If the seeds don't need to be in the sun or have light to germinate, then you would cover with a thin layer of very fine soil. Maybe you have to run the soil through a sifter or just put it in a pan and sift it by hand. You don't want big rocks to land on top of the seed. You just need a thin layer to spread over it. 

If you're really worried about them germinating, the ones that don't need light, you can even peg down a piece of newspaper over them and that helps prevent water from dislodging them. You water right over the newspaper. And so the water droplets don't hit them directly and cause them to fly up in the air. But obviously it doesn't let light through. The newspaper breaks down very quickly and you don't have a problem in the garden with it. 

Farmer Fred

Hmm, really? So even if a seed can germinate in five days, that newspaper would be broken up enough that it could push through? 

Debbie Flower

It'll be brown by then and you'll see a bump in the paper. So then you want to rip a hole in it. 

Farmer Fred

OK, that makes sense. And there's the option, too, of maybe starting all your annuals in pots and let them grow a few inches and then you can likely rake back a little bit of the mulch to put in that transplant. Just don't let that mulch rest on the stem of the transplant. 

Debbie Flower

And then water regularly, having the water go into the media that was in the pot around the roots of the plant because that will dry out pretty fast, faster than the field soil will. 

Farmer Fred

All right. That sounds like good advice. So, we’ve learned survival skills today on how to build a fire, and gardening too. We've done quite well. Debbie Flower, thanks for your help. 

Debbie Flower

You're welcome, Fred. 

Farmer Fred

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