Preparing Tomato Seed From The Greenhouse

The thing I love most about a heated greenhouse is nice healthy tomatoes all winter long. Its kept at least a couple of degrees above freezing at night and allowed to warm up to about 85°F in the daytime with vent fan thermostats. On a sunny day with the double-wall poly carbonate glazing its definitely a hot-house in there, even when freezing outside. Right now its a 110V fan system, but I have everything needed to convert over to 12V car radiator fans running on solar. The vents don't open automatically, which requires minimal intervention. Will do a post about the greenhouse when its more interesting out there.

We had a recent propane heater failure that let the temperature fall a few degrees below freezing on a very cold night and took out the tomatoes. So, its time to start some more. For uncrossed seed, we only grew a very dense paste tomato variety named Heidi from a friend. It's more resistant to tip rot, but doesn't bear fruit after the greenhouse gets over 90°F in the daytime. It will bear well until it gets too hot in there, so time is of the essence.

First step is to scoop out the seeds from a few of the nicer fruits and put in a tall narrow glass. I didn't have very many tomatoes gathered from before the freeze. With paste tomatoes there isn't enough juice to gracefully prepare seed. So, the volume was doubled with some very good drinking water. A bit of paper towel was banded over the top. It will sit in a warm room for a few days until some fermentation begins to remove the jelly sacks around the seeds, just like mother nature does with a fallen fruit. Then the sunk seeds will be rinsed off in preparation for planting or drying.

Will post when planting some of these along with some stored seed left over from last season.

In May, contact me at our store link below if you want to trade for some seed.

Photo backdrop is work in process. It takes 15-days to make a bottle of Smart Colloidal Silver.

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