1. Check you current plants. The bloom stems develop at a node on new growth and you can see them before the blooms develop.

2. Again examine the current plants. You will have fruit ripening from early bloom clusters and new blooms still appearing. Whether or not there will be time to taste any first will depend on the variety - 99% of the time, no. Save the seeds, taste the fruit later and if you don't like it, pitch or trade the seeds.

Many determinate plants will develop most all their bloom clusters within a few weeks of each other so there is no way to taste first. Some will have a later flush of blooms but they aren't the ideal fruit for saving seed as the plant may already be dying off, have disease, pest problems, or will only produce small fruit. Indeterminates will bloom in flushes until frost but the air temps may not allow for pollination of later blooms. Best bet is to bag the second or third cluster of blooms - always more than one from the same plant and always from more than one plant from the same variety.

3 & 4. Make our own bags out of tulle from the fabric store, thread a drawstring around the opening and loosely tie it around the base of the bloom stem. See the picture in the FAQ.

5. The bag can be removed and the cluster tagged for saving as soon as the small green fruit show.

6. If the air temps allow, tomato blooms self-pollinate themselves. Each bloom does it's own thing. That is why the chances of cross pollination except in potato leaf varieties are so slim. So the bags do not interfere in any way and no hand pollination is required. What you do have to do is monitor the air temps. If not within the accepted range you will be wasting your time bagging the blooms as the blossoms will drop anyway.

There are many discussions here on bagging tomato blooms and lots of info on the web on preventing cross-pollination, intentional crossing, stabilized hybrids vs. non-stabilized, saving seed from hybrids vs. heirlooms, bagging & tagging, and storing seed, etc. that searches will pull up for you to review if you want to get into this at a professional level. If your goal is just saving some of your own seeds to use the following year then you don't need to worry about all this stuff. ;)

Good luck!

Dave

I am looking at saving seed for myself and trading a few to other people. I am not going to be a big trader or listing at SSE these seeds.

How does one let others know then that they were not bagged?

What are the chances of cross-pollination if plants are 4' away from each other?

thanks,

Dean

The better question is how many seed saver/traders actually bag their blooms? I can't answer that except to guess based on past discussions here - not many. ;) Every time the question comes up there are 3 "no problem" replies for every "you must bag" reply. But that is a very unscientific study on my part. ;)

You can always tell any traders that these seeds weren't bagged and leave it up to them. That's what I do. No one has ever passed on a trade and some act like "why are you bothering to tell me that?"

The latest quote I have seen here on % of crossing was something around 5% but I don't know the source. A study linked below done by the founder of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Jeff McCormack, in 1982 references a study done by Currence and Jenkins (1942). In that study 4 rows of plants 6 feet apart resulted in 0.2% natural cross pollination. The highest % of cross was with 2 rows 6' apart it rose to 1.8%

So IMO the minimal amount of crossing that can happen doesn't make bagging blooms worth while for the home gardener UNLESS he wants to do some hybridization work. If you are saving seeds just to grow next year for yourself and a few trades then I suggest you review all the other past discussions here on tomato cross pollination and pose the question - how many tomato seed savers bag their blooms?

Hope this helps.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Isolation Distances...McCormack (pdf format)

What are the chances of cross-pollination if plants are 4' away from each other?

*****

Impossible to predict Dean.

Just too many variables such as:

Frequency of insect pollinators in you area.

Numbers of same.

Which kinds, some can fly up to two miles.

Weather.

Environmental conditions can cause some varieties that normally don't have exherted stigma's to have them. Those are stigmas that protrude above the pollen bearing anthers so that X pollination is much more possible.

I do suggest that you go to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange via Google and look for the excellent article written by Dr Jeff McCormack on NCP ( natural cross pollination)

Cross pollination numbers can range from zero, not often found, up to maybe 50%. A x pollination value of 50% means that on average 50/100 varieties from which seed is saved will have x pollinated seeds.

Never save seed from just one fruit; best to save from several fruits on a plant and even better to save from several fruits on several plants of the same variety. Just stacking the odds in your favor re X pollination.

But my comments here pertain to non bagged blossoms.

If not all the ovules in the tomato ovary are fertilized by self pollenization, which is most common, then any foreign pollen can fertilize the unfertilized ovules. Fertilized ovules become seeds.

Carolyn

Here's a link to the article Carolyn mentions as it is a bit hard to find there. (At least I assume this is the one you mean, right Carolyn?)

It is an edited and abbreviated version of the one I linked above and a LOT easier to understand. ;)

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Isolation Distances for Tomatoes by McCormack

Here's a link to the article Carolyn mentions as it is a bit hard to find there. (At least I assume this is the one you mean, right Carolyn?)

Yes Dave, that's the one I was referring to.

Jeff is terribly conservative on some of his isolation distances, of that I'm convinced.

And I'm one who used to get about a 5% X rate and have said so here several times, but that's an average based on many years data and growing about 2000 different varieties over a many year period of time.

Dave, I was typing while you were posting. Had I seen your post first I probably wouldn't have said as much as I did.

So, in summary, each person has to find out what the average X rate is in their own location based on experience, that is, saving seeds from varieties year after year. There is no way that anyone can predict what it will be in any given year.

I used to grow so many plant/varieties each year that bagging was never an option.

And my listings in the SSE Yearbooks say that I do not guarantee seed purity but that my record is pretty darn good. And I've offered here at GW and elsewhere about 300 varieties and have said the same thing.

Carolyn

How does one let others know then that they were not bagged?

Easy. When you offer the seeds for trade, in your initial offerings just say, "The seeds are OP, non-bagged."

This way people know exactly what they're trading for. I think you'll find that the vast majority of traders will be delighted to grow your seeds.

Bag'm ... schmag'm

Yep, that's pretty much the norm.

Most people do not bag their tomato seeds and most people do not frown down upon those who don't.

Dean, it doesn't matter what you're trading, veggies or flowers, or shrubs or trees, whatever. If anyone "cops an attitude" don't trade with them. They have issues that you're not going to be able to fix. Crabby traders are a very rare occurrence, one in a while they pop up, but they go back to their own self-induced misery sooner than later.

Trade your seeds, share your seeds, and enjoy the experience.

Thanks for asking about this Dean, I'm getting ready to try saving seeds for the first time. I'm growing some Traveler(Arkansas) Tomatoes and I want to save the seeds. The first blooms have just appeared and the weather is supposed to cool into the 60's at night in about week or so making fruiting possible.
My closest plants of a different variety are up against the west side of the house. My Traveler plants are near the southeast corner of my house, say 100 ft away. I guess cross pollenation chances are very slim. No need for me to bag right?
I just got some SASE seeds from Trudi at WinterSown.org and I hope to save some of those seeds next year. Thanks Trudi. And thanks to the rest of you for the help.

Pete