October 10, 2024, 11:07 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Home-grown tomatoes not only taste better than store-bought ones, but you also have a much wider choice of varieties. You also don’t have to keep buying new seeds. myHOMEBOOK explains how to propagate tomatoes yourself using seeds.
Tomatoes are a popular and versatile fruit. The great thing is that they can be propagated from seed. However, there are a few things to bear in mind, as not all tomatoes will work.
Things to bear in mind if you want to propagate tomatoes from seed
Propagating plants from existing ones sounds practical. But if you want to obtain seeds from your own plants in the garden or on the balcony and use them to grow new plants, you should pay attention to a few things. For example, you should make sure that the plants you grow on your patio or in your garden are so-called seed-resistant plants and not F1 hybrids. “If these conditions are met, anything is possible – but with different levels of difficulty,” says ecologist and author Sigrid Drage.
According to her, certain plant species are particularly easy to propagate, including tomatoes and lettuce of the Lactuca genus. “They pollinate themselves, so they don’t cross-pollinate, and there’s not much else that can go wrong,” says Drage. “Tomatoes are particularly suitable; they are available in a lush, colorful variety, and the probability of cross-pollination is limited.”
How to obtain seeds from tomatoes
If you want to harvest larger quantities of tomato seeds and store them for a longer period of time, the ecologist recommends “seed fermentation”. This involves collecting the tomato liquid with the seeds in a cup and leaving it at room temperature for two to three days. Covering it with kitchen paper or a cloth keeps fruit flies away.
“During fermentation, the jelly that covers the seeds is broken down,” says Drage, explaining this step. “After this process, the seeds are well-preserved and can be sown individually whenever needed. In addition, fermentation suppresses any seed-borne diseases.”
In the next step, the seeds are washed with water. According to Drage, this works best with a larger container and a kitchen sieve. Afterward, allow them to dry thoroughly on absorbent paper, and then store them in small bags marked with the variety and date.
Storing seeds correctly to propagate tomatoes
Collect the labeled paper bags containing the seeds in airtight containers, like screw-top jars or plastic boxes, and keep them in a cupboard. Tomatoes can then be grown without any problems, even after four years.
Important: The seeds must always be stored dry and safe from mice, moths, and the like. “It shouldn’t be hot either; cold is less of a problem,” says Drage.
Good to know: Not every seed lasts this long. If you want to propagate chives yourself, for example, you should definitely sow the seeds the year after the harvest, says Drage. Otherwise, they won’t germinate.
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Simply allow unripe tomatoes to ripen
If an unripe tomato has fallen off the plant, this does not mean that you have to dispose of it. You can still use its seeds for propagation. However, the tomato still needs to ripen. To do this, simply place the green tomato in a warm place for a few days, explains Sandra von Rekowski from the Bundesverband Deutscher Gartenfreunde e. V. in an earlier interview with myHOMEBOOK. If there are several unripe tomatoes, it is advisable to place them at a distance from each other. This helps to prevent the spread of diseases from one tomato to another.
With material from dpa