How to prepare tomato seeds at home and get a winter harvest from them - advice from experienced gardeners

Experienced gardeners are thinking about how to prepare tomato seeds at home and no longer choose from a variety of options from year to year. And if you haven't yet experienced the beauty of a personal garden seed storage, try starting this season. Start with tomatoes.

Grow tomatoes from your own seeds on the windowsill and enjoy the taste of fresh vegetable salad all year round. Tempting? Then let's move from words to deeds!

Benefits of self-collecting seed

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to grow a rich crop that fully matches the description on the seed package, experienced gardeners are increasingly wondering how to preserve tomato seeds at home.

On the one hand, this is confidence in the quality of the seed, and on the other hand, savings in the family budget. If you also want to experience the benefits of growing tomatoes at home, we will continue to dive and analyze all the subtleties of the seed selection process and the most common mistakes.

Choosing the best tomatoes

Everyone knows that only mature, healthy fruits are suitable for collecting seeds. But here are some more helpful tips that you may not have heard of yet:

• for open ground tomatoes we take fruits from the first brush, and for greenhouse varieties - from the second and third;
• the fruits must match the characteristics of the variety as much as possible;
• rotten tomatoes will not work;
• we choose female fruits, they give a bountiful harvest, and from year to year they improve the quality of the variety.

How to distinguish male from female

The top of the male fetus has a dot-shaped end, while in the female they are flatter and may even be in the form of a strip, a speck. In cone-shaped and plum-shaped varieties such as Bull's Heart, gender can be determined by the shape of the crown. In a male fetus, it is more elongated.

Moving on to collecting seeds

We cut the tomatoes into slices and carefully collect the liquid with seeds in a container made of glass, porcelain or food grade plastic. In this case, the seeds must be completely covered with liquid. Cover with a leaking lid and leave at room temperature for fermentation.

When the liquid is covered with a film and the seeds sink to the bottom, the fermentation process is complete. This can happen in 1-2 days depending on the variety and the room temperature. After that, rinse the seeds with water and dry them on a paper towel. For final drying, disposable plates are suitable, from which it is convenient to collect the resulting seeds. We spread clean seeds and leave for 5-7 days.

As a preventive measure against infestations, seeds can be disinfected before drying. To do this, it is enough to place them in a weak potassium permanganate solution or laundry soap for 30 minutes. And then we move on to drying and storage.

Ideal conditions for storing harvested seeds are temperatures from 0 to 5 degrees and humidity no more than 75%. But not everyone can create them. Therefore, we follow the main rule - to avoid changes in humidity and temperature.

A simplified way to harvest tomato seeds

We collect tomato seeds together with juice in a glass container. And then, without additional fermentation and fermentation, lay out a thin layer on a napkin and leave to dry for 5-7 days. We collect and store the dried seeds until planting.

Important! The fermentation method described in the first part of the article is more natural for tomato seeds and mimics the life cycle of a plant as much as possible. Tomato juice disinfects the seeds and helps get rid of bacteria that can accumulate on the tomato during the growing period.

Method with water without fermentation

We collect tomato seeds as described above. The presence and volume of juice in this case does not matter. Fill the container with seeds to the top with water and leave for 15-20 minutes. During this time, mix the liquid 3-4 times so that the seeds are completely freed from pulp and juice. We wash and dry the seeds as in the first case.

If, with this method of collecting seeds, some seeds surfaced, while others remained at the bottom - it doesn't mean anything... Top seeds are prevented from sinking pulp particles. Both of these seeds will germinate in the same way and can be used for planting.

Recommended timing for harvesting tomato seeds

In addition to the qualities of the fruits themselves, we also take into account the timing of seed collection. If the seeds are harvested too early, the plant will not develop well. If you are late with the selection, there is a risk of not getting a harvest at all due to possible infections and diseases.

The best option for collecting seeds is in the middle of fruiting. They differ in different varieties and species:

1. Early ripening varieties ripen in mid-July and end fruiting in the second half of August. The collection can begin in early August.
2. Mid-season varieties begin bearing fruit in August and end in early September. The optimal time for collecting seeds is the last week of August.
3. Late-ripening varieties begin their maturity period in early September and finish before October. This means that we start collecting seeds on September 15th.

We select varieties for growing in an apartment

First of all, we choose which tomatoes can be grown on the windowsill. Popular varieties of tomatoes for open ground and greenhouses are completely unsuitable for balconies and windowsills.

It is best to choose low to medium-sized varieties of cherry tomatoes. Such tomatoes will ripen faster even with a lack of sunlight in the winter. For information on how to grow tomatoes on a window at home, check out the package with seeds, manufacturers indicate this information on the back.

If you already have seeds harvested by your own hands, and you tried to grow tomatoes on the windowsill, great, we use them and proceed to planting.

We proceed to landing

To grow tomatoes at home in winter, you need to start preparing in August by sowing seeds. First of all, we will prepare the necessary equipment. To grow tomatoes at home, ordinary plastic cups with holes in the bottom and containers with a volume of 7-10 liters are quite suitable for further transplantation.

To begin with, the seeds are germinated, this will accelerate germination. Otherwise, you will have to wait too long for the fruit. First of all, we spread the selected seeds between layers of wet gauze.

As soon as the seeds hatch, they are ready to be planted in cups. To fill the glass, we use special peat tablets for growing seedlings. Put 1 seed in a cup and sprinkle it on about 1 cm with a layer of substrate.

Replenishment and hardening of seeds

To increase the yield of seeds, they can be feed nutrients. Choose any of the convenient methods:

1. Aloe juice with water in a 1: 1 ratio.
2. Potassium or sodium humate - a quarter teaspoon per liter of water.
3. Wood ash. solution of 1 tsp ash per liter of water.
4. Special preparation "Immunocytofit" or similar.

After preparing the selected option, the seeds are placed in a gauze bag and sent to the solution for 12 hours, then taken out and dried, without rinsing with water.

Care for seedlings on the windowsill

For irrigation, we use only water that has settled for at least a week, ordinary tap water will destroy your plants. For additional purification, you can use a filter, but this is no longer so significant. We water ourselves once every 5 days, while we moisten only the soil, there is no need to spray the seedlings, this will only harm the young tomatoes.

After the plant has the first 4 leaves, you can transplant to a permanent place. Fertile black soil mixed with peat in a 3: 1 ratio or ready-made soil mixture is suitable as a filling of pots.

Place the pots with transplanted sprouts immediately on a well-lit windowsill with sufficient heat or arrange additional lighting. If there is a battery under the windowsill, cover it with a grate so that too hot air does not overheat the leaves of the plants. To ensure that the sun in the window evenly warms up all parts of the plant, just turn the pots in different directions. This will prevent your tomatoes on the window from stretching unnecessarily towards the light source.

After about 7 days, you can carry out the first fertilizing with mineral fertilizers, such as "Solution", "Aquarin" or "Nitrofoska". Given the fact that tomatoes are grown at home, feeding should be done at intervals of 10 days.

How to pollinate tomatoes at home

Of course, you cannot pollinate tomatoes at home as efficiently as insects do, but it is very possible to create conditions as close as possible to this process. First of all, let's choose the right time. Since pollen ripens at night, pollination can begin at 8-10 am. In the first stage, the plant is sprayed to create the necessary moisture.

Then a wind simulation is created using a fan. You can simply create a draft naturally, but make sure that it is not cold frosty air from an open balcony.

We carry out pollination at home using a simple soft brush for painting. To do this, lightly touch all the opened flowers and transfer the pollen to the pistils. If, after a while, the petals of the flower bent back, it means that pollination was successful and the process of growth of the ovary was started.

Read also:

How to use dill seeds for pancreatitis and how they are useful.

Features of growing gymnospermous pumpkin and what seeds you should pay attention to.

How to grow and when to harvest beet seeds: a step-by-step guide and important tips.

Additional lighting

To grow tomatoes at home on a windowsill, additional lighting may be required. And if your windows cannot boast of a lot of sunlight, supplementary lighting will be simply irreplaceable.

Red and blue LED lamps are perfect for this. You can buy them in specialized stores or online sites selling popular goods.

Advantages of LED lamps:

• consume little electricity;
• do not heat up, which means they are more fireproof;
• environmentally friendly, because do not need special disposal.

Conclusion

The quality of vegetables in stores every year becomes more dubious, and the desire to grow their own vegetables and greens only increases. Do not hesitate for a long time, just try to do it at home or on the site.

If you follow the simple rules and our advice, the result will not be long in coming. And already this year you will enjoy the taste of excellent window-grown tomatoes. And next year you won't even have to buy seeds, because the best ones have already been selected for your personal seed collection.