I save tomato seeds by using a teaspoon to scoop out one seed cavity from a slice of tomato which I then put on my plate to eat. I put the scoop onto a half sheet of paper towel. If I'm thinking ahead I write my notes on the paper towel, or as usual; after the seeds are on it. Depending on how many I need I may scoop out a couple more cavities. I let them dry for a few days and them put them on my stack of seeds on an end of my bookcase. Don't get salt on your seeds. The advantage of doing this at the dinner table is your notes tend to be more accurate. If I don't like the tomato I just don't save the seeds. My problem is remembering which tomato came from which plant. I had 12 different.

I've never done it another way. My theory if you make this too complicated, you're likely not to do it.

This year I saved cuke seeds, zucchini, radish, a variety of squash and pumpkin, and butterhead lettuce. I also saved a few different ornamental corn and popcorn. The lettuce I saved by breaking up the seed shoots and putting them in a freezer bag. I had also let the Black Seeded Simpson against the fence bolt and go to seed. Somehow I missed the seed heads and when I went looking they were gone.

I've only been buying heirloom OP seeds so I can be sure of what I get. Some of my squash, pumpkin and the corn came from donations so I'm not positive it's all OP seed. I had a white pumpkin which I didn't save seed from because in the Johnny's catalog they were all hybrid.

Jamie - BTW, since I've been using this method, I've been able to germinate some seeds that were 15 years old!

Pepper seeds do not last as long, but I also do not ferment them, either. (No pulp)

I find that my seeds are larger than the seeds from the same variety that I buy. Don't have any idea why. Do they grow them poorly, or don't let them ripen on the vine.

I find it easier to peal a tomato seed off my paper towel than it is to dump them...... OHh no all over the next row!

The last few years I've been growing in 1020 trays, before that in coffee cups. I think next spring I'll try some cups again, seems like they were healthier. I've never used heat mats. If I grow my tomatoes starting in April they do fine. Before that they struggle. If I use used foam coffee cups I get mold. I always double the cups, the top one with a hole. My wife hates the seed growing season!

John - My DH hates the fermenting season! He's ok with the growing season though.

I find the seeds saved from cherry varieties to be smaller, too.

I also like to save enough seeds to be able to trade them, if someone wants that variety. Usually I have more than several hundred seeds per variety.

Welcome, Len! It's fun to have new people join in and tell us about a different area of the country and it's gardening advantages and challenges.

I put my fermented and then rinsed tomato seeds on a Corelle plate. A slight tilt brings the slight amount of remaining water to one edge where I can pour it off or sponge it up with a towel. It's easy to flick the seeds off the slick surface of the plate after they dry for several days. In the fall, most of my dessert plates are on top of the upright piano with seeds drying on them...in fact there are still a few plates missing from the cupboard. It's long past time to bag up the 2018 seeds :)

We are spending some time at my daughter's house in Pennsylvania. She has ?pumpkins, squash? from volunteer vines. We had fun trying to guess which 2017 varieties crossed to give the 4 weird shapes she had this year. The squash/pumpkin group is tough to save seed from unless you only grow one OP variety of each species or do hand pollination with careful bagging of blossoms before and after. I would have trouble only growing one C. pepo variety...gotta have summer squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and maybe gourds....and they will all cross. That was also the 2017 grow list my daughter had. She treated her volunteer harvest as decorations, not wanting to find out which ones had the awful taste of gourds that most slightly resembled.

naturegirl

We've been growing and saving seed from 3 different pumpkins plus a small green gourd for years in the same small garden. We've been growing so long I don't remember what they are or where we got them. I think at the orchard store near here. One's the tiny pumpkin that fits in your hand, one slightly larger and another maybe 5" in diameter. The gourd is a dark green color with vertical stripes about the size of the smallest pumpkin. This year we also grew seeds from a 10 or 12" halloween style pumpkin. The problem is we got raided 3 times in the great 2018 pumpkin patch heist. They took everyone. I never plant the gourd seeds, my wife just throws a gourd in the garden every spring. I put up with it growing on the north fence till it gets over to the cukes.

So in summation I say that I'd never plant seeds from something I knew was a hybrid, but I'm willing to gamble with seed from an unknown something in my hand. None ever crossed. I never grew zucchini in that same garden.

Jack - Don't think that I could take Minnesota's winters. What we get here is more than enough.

They have already posted a flood watch for us beginning around 9 pm. 1' to 1.5' in some places. Hope it's not here.

I agree with Cindy on the fermentation of tomato seeds and after 4 or 5 days rinse them and then I personally spread them out on wax paper then you can carefully soak up excess water with a paper towel and they are very easy to maneuver on the wax paper. After 3-5 days put your pre-labeled seeds into whatever you store them in-I use small plastic baggies some people prefer a storage medium that allows air to get to the seeds but I haven't seen a difference and little baggies take up less space and allow one to grow their varieties without needing a storage facility. I have about 100 varieties of tomato seeds in regular sandwich baggie.

I cut down 4 trees for posts for the new veggie garden. They were all Sassafras. I need to make sure the rest are as small as possible. Hard to lift a 14 foot post.

I got a catalog from Burnt Ridge and found a cider apple called Frequin Rouge. How's that pronounced??

Okay I guess my tomato seeds are in a quart size baggie, my pepper seeds are in the sandwich baggie

John - I speak Greek but not French (or whatever the origin Language for that name is) so I can't comment on the pronunciation, maybe one of the other folks is more cultured than I am haha!

You're right, it's French, not that I'm an expert.

You may have heard of the Moulin Rouge? 'Rouge' means 'red' in French. And the Moulin Rouge is a bar/cabaret in Paris. At one time it was a frequent hangout for artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec.

However, here is what I googled for the tree:

https://www.summerlandvarieties.com/varieties/page:5/product/71/Frequin_Rouge/

Was unable to translate ' Frequin.'

Moulin Rouge was also a movie with Nicole Kidman.

I had tried to find a translation also, also without luck. I went to the USDA site and entered frequin in the search box. I got 6 results all apples, but not the frequin apple I was lookin for. My guess from that is that the term has some apple meaning. If you combine it with apple in English it could mean a lousy apple?

The USDA doesn't spend much effort describing any of the six except for the one they call only Frequin, PI 162503. That one is described as having aromatic flavor and it's the only one that has any mention of marketability which is juice, but they say it's a dry apple? They all are susceptible to fireblight and they're all small to medium except the one they call Surpasse Frequin.

I didn't plan on posting so much about this here, I just thought the way I'd pronounce the word was funny.

John - Frequin Rouge = Freak'n Red :-O If you lived around here I would give you all of the hedge (Osage Orange) posts you wanted. Those things last for decades. I hate to even cut the trees because the wood is so hard on my chain saw blades. All of the farmers use hedge for their fence posts around these parts. The wood also burns hotter than hades.

Cindy - how's the weather today? :-( We had fierce winds over night that took down a lot of trees in the area. I won't know if I lost any until I get home from work.

Richard - if you go to a craft store like Hobby Lobby you can get little plastic (~2"x3") resealable bags for about $5 per 100. They work real well for storing seeds.

Jack - So far we've had .65" of rain but there's another band moving in this afternoon. The creek is out of it's banks though not as bad as last time. At least not yet.

Our creek is named Piney Run. (actually, it's not really ours, it's on the common ground) Piney Run flows into Hickory Run, which flow into Difficult Run, and that flows into the Potomac River.

Pretty cool, no?

Hope that your trees are still standing!

I should mention that I received an order, my first, from the above link. No charge, shipped via UPS Express and received two days before Christmas weekend, right before the shutdown.

There's a wealth of vegetables and fruit there. Apples cherries, pears, tomato seeds, garlic, grapes. I entered McIntosh and got 5 or 6 different varieties. I ordered 4 and got 3 which I plan on grafting to one rootstock. I've heard the ones that aren't so red have better flavor, we'll find out. I received a Cox's Orange Pippin which is supposedly the best tasting apple, it also grows vigorously and bears fruit at a young age. The reason it's not popular is it tends to russet.

You have to order, apples, before Jan 10. I don't know what they'll do to orders backed up while no ones home.

LoneJack

I'm cutting what ever I find that's 14 feet tall and fairly straight. I cut one yesterday that's too fat and not tall enough, but I can use it at the gate. I need the height only to hold up a wire to deter, maybe, the deer here. But I need to be able to carry, drag these things maybe 500 feet so I want them as skinny as possible. Oak or Locust would be way too heavy, but Sassafras is what's there. I'm hoping it'll outlast me.

I want to enclose a new garden area where I have two small gardens and 6 fruit trees all fenced. I figure with the fence and posts that are there I can enclose the whole 34 x 64 foot area except I need two rolls of 5 foot fence and the posts I cut.

I once built a garden fence 9 feet high. They jumped it, not just to eat. They used it as a safe bedding area. So I'm going up one more wire. This'd all be easier if they allowed deer hunting at least with a shotgun.

This is a Bolseno that is basically dead but still has 20 ripening tomatoes on it

These are from a couple of day since I haven't picked any since Christmas Eve.

Cindy, like most of the people here the lobster would have been my first choice-it is probably my favorite meat (backstrap and filet mignon are not bad either).

Jack, that is exactly the type of baggies I use for my own seeds, but I have a lot still in their original packaging, so I know where they came from and can keep track of which companies produce the best seeds. They have them at Walmart too in the jewelry section.

Richard -- which are the best tasting tomatoes you have now (in the Winter)?

Also saw you are growing Brandy Boy -- we loved it (too bad the disease pressure here has stopped us from growing it again).

Tony

p.s. I believe your Mycostop process will work next year for me, too (so I can revisit in 2020 some of my fav beefsteaks).

Tony

Richard - The lobster is now long gone. May pick up a couple more for New Year's Eve. ;) It's also my favorite.

We now have 1.01" of rain, so far.

Cindy -- spearfishing in the stream...?

p.s. our fav are king crab legs

Tony

14tomatoes

Have you had problems with Brandy Boy, and if so what. I'd think a hybrid would have some resistance to sumpin. I looked at Burpee's Page on it. They say improved resistance, but don't give details, so I think there are no details.

Do you grow beefsteaks, have you had problems or just, in general, scared off

Tony, the Bolseno and Black Cherry tomatoes have the best flavor. Actually the flavor is not too degraded in the winter but the consistency is the problem. The Patio tomatoes were mushy in the middle and I really hate that. I haven't tried any of the 20 tomatoes on the Bolseno plant by the house but a couple of them are just about ripe so I will be trying one in the next few days. Most of the cherry varieties are barely phased by the cold and 90% have the same internal integrity in the winter that they do in the summer-non of the bigger tomatoes are completely unphased but the Bolsenos have been minimally affected so far. I have about 15 different varieties with large green (8-14oz) tomatoes on them. Almost all the plants I started in the cloth containers died while none (maybe one) of the ones in the hard plastic containers suffered the same fate. The ones that aren't staked into the ground take a beating from the perpetually high winds around here and fall over regularly so I understand why they are not as productive as the ones in the yard but most have a couple of tomatoes. I think I only have 4 with nothing on them and two are Black Beauty (one is struggling to push out a little deformed fruit). The Brandy Boy and Brandywine plants probably have the biggest tomatoes although the Black from Tula has one monster too.

I want to wish everybody on the site a wonderful New Year and thank y'all for your input and good will. I am really glad I found this forum and my garden friends.

Love king crab legs too Tony especially cooked on a pit. They are a little more work than a lobster-claws are the best-have to be king crab the others are not very tasty around here especially the blue crabs. They are super easy to catch and make pretty good crab cakes though

It is raining continuously here outside of Seattle and the weatherman promises more tomorrow. They are usually right except when they forecast sunshine. So I'm gardening on the computer today, trying to figure out how to plant multiple varieties of everything in limited space:) Wish it looked like this again now!

I did check out my Tree Collard starts and watered the lettuce in the greenhouse...

Richard where are you located that you are growing tomatoes in December?

Happy New Year all!

Len, I am in deep south Texas. Last year I mainly grew in the winter because my summer crop got destroyed by Hurricane Harley. It was actually much colder last year. I had to move them inside about 15 times (sometimes for 2-4 days) to keep them from freezing and everything in the ground froze. This year is the mildest winter I can remember. January and February are the coldest months around here, but I have only had to move them inside once this winter and I think it was in November. It has got down in the 36-40 degree range numerous times but without much wind and usually for only 4-5 hours so the tomato plants haven't even been dropping many blooms although they put out only maybe a 1/3 to 1/2 as many as in the summer

Tony, I just harvested a couple of the Bolseno tomatoes and they are just as awesome as ever. Very strong acidic flavor with tender skin that rarely splits and no internal degradation. I have some other tomatoes that I must have mislabeled because I have Sun Gold on them and they are about the size of a Compari tomato and very tasty, loaded with juice.

I went thru all the tomatoes in the USDA collection looking for a specific pink tomato, which I didn't find. I was amazed at how many have no picture, no description or data of any kind. Are many of the items just a packet of seed in a freezer? And I had the feeling that I didn't get the entire collection. It told me that I had all the items; 500 of 500. Today that suspicion was confirmed. I decided today to go back to an item I had looked at yesterday. It didn't come up in today's presentations. So I went to my browsers history and found the one I looked at. From the item number on the picture I did a find on the items that were presented, not there. So I put the item number ( 194166 ) back into the search box at the above link and Viola there it was.

It's an extremely ugly tomato as grown and presented, but maybe all that ugliness is blossom end rot. The picture wasn't taken by the USDA which is the only picture I found not on the "official USDA background". Would that be called the OUB??

I did notice that many of the tomatoes that had a picture, a reasonable name, and showed some promise came up at Victory Seed when I searched the name on the web. I never looked at tomatoes with a number for a name.

So... If I didn't get the entire collection on my first try.........it might actually be there.

Richard Teague

You make me envious, with all that production this late in the season. Maybe when I hit the powerball I'll build a place down your way to grow veggies. And the place in Hawaii, and Maine. Both on the coast.

Megan Wise NBC12

We are now getting the winds that Jack mentioned. Tomorrow will be much cooler.

Cindy- Funny picture...but not really funny situation. I feel for you. I suppose liquid is better than frozen though, right?

Itsmce - Yes, there are places that are really suffering with these rains. It's on the news every day now. Unfortunately, we will be getting more on Monday.

John - There's a place on the National Plant Germplasm System where you can type in a number for the amount of returns you would like. "Return up to ______ accessions." Where the space is, there's a rectangle. I typed in 10,000 and it gave me the max of 6151 for tomatoes.

John, this will be my last 3-6 months here so I might need to figure out how to set up a heated greenhouse as I will be moving north soon. I always thought if someone had a decent sized glass/plexiglas greenhouse they could put an electric space heater and a couple fans and keep it around 70 degrees all winter-might need a window unit a/c in the heat of summer

Richard Teague

The electric bill would be tremendous. I new a fellow who had a commercial operation who had a route he drove picking up used motor oil from service stations. He used to use that for a heater. But he finally gave up and sold out to an outfit that raised homes.

Cindy

Thanks for the help. I had it stuck on 1221 until I removed "with images". Now I'm up to 10,471 !?? So I searched on pink tomato and got 32. This could be a big job.

Hi folks - jumping in at the tail-end of the year with an introduction. I'm Stacy, and I've been helping to run an organic community garden for a couple of years now. I love the friendly and helpful conversations here...I've been following this thread for a long while and thought I'd share some mid-Ohio garden POVs. I have a 15'x30' plot of raised beds, and ALWAYS over indulge with seed orders ;-)

On that topic: I've been ordering from Baker Creek for the past 4 years and i've never had a problem with germination. However, instead of heirloom toms this year, I'm going to experiment with hybrids with a (purported) resistance to early and/or late blight. Love your thoughts on these that I've ordered from Totally Tomatoes: Defiant, Grandma’s Pick, Rugged Boy, Jasper and Red Valentine

I also always get a few of Brad Gates’ crazy colored tomatoes just for the fun of seeing how they turn out. This year I’ve ordered: Norwood Meiners, Janet Jacinthe and Painted Lady

Thanks and happy New Year to all!

Hi Stacy - I used to live in Ohio, years ago.

Of the tomato varieties you listed, I haven't grown any of them. You'll have to let us know how you like them and how productive they are.

Happy Gardening!

A friend of mine in Greece sent me a package of “gigantes” (literally ‘giants’) and I’m gong to attemp to grow them this year. They are a variety of broad bean and like cooler weather so I will start them a little earlier than normal.

Heres a photo of them with my thumb for comparison. They are delicious braised in a tomato sauce.

A lot of other cultures grow them as well, but I’m only familiar with the Greek variety.

I got my search results for the USDA site down to 5390 items by searching for Solanum lycopersicum instead of tomato. Most of the results I was getting was for grapes, I think vitus is. The first page had two tomatoes and the rest were vitus. The site their needs some attention from their network people. It was taking me a couple minutes to reload the page every time I clicked on an item and then went back to the search results. I got it reasonably slow by only showing 25 items for each page. But then I noticed that the page is spending forever at google-analytics. The USDA needs to either get rid of their tracking software or put it at the bottom of their page code so the page is usable in the meanwhile.

I did find an interesting tomato called "skyliner" a four inch dia red tomato. It's item number 645026. No idea how it tastes. The guvmint isn't interested in the taste of their 5000 tomato seed collection. Ther is some interest in apple taste, but no one there is interested in tomato taste. That's an indication of why so many hybrids are unremarkable as far as taste.

Oh boy Jamie...there is something I can add to my grow list...maybe for 2020 as I'm sure I have already totally overdone it for 2019. After much trial and error I finally figured out how to make my seed lists into something that will upload here. There are two separate garden areas here as we live on a long narrow north/south lot with the house right in the middle. Out front there are about 100' of 3' wide raised beds. The back yard slopes south to the lake and vegetables share with some lawn, lots of dahlias, and other flowers. There are about 25' of raspberries growing below our sundeck that get 100% sun. As you can see this year I am trying many heirloom varieties and cutting back on hybrids; actually not buying any new hybrid seed on purpose. I'm probably not disciplined enough to save many kinds of seed but want to support those that have the resources and energy to preserve our history of food.

Stacy have you grown any of the tomatoes on my list and how did they do for you? Interesting that you are concerned about blight.

Tony here was the white eggplant i saw on Johnny's https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/eggplant/italian-eggplants/aretussa-f1-eggplant-seed-3759.html

Here is the Burpee one that I ordered https://www.burpee.com/gardening-supplies/holiday-gift-guide/2019-burpee-superstars-collection-99830R.html

They also had some good sounding "Spicy Mixes" https://www.burpee.com/vegetables/mesclun/mesclun-spicy-mix-54288A.html https://www.burpee.com/vegetables/lettuce/lettuce-fordhook-favorites-blend-52779A.html

I also got a few more tomato varieties of course https://www.burpee.com/vegetables/tomatoes/tomato-druzba-56937A.html

They have a deal now that if you put in Burpee20 you get 20% off your entire order. I can never resist the discount sales.

Hey Len - I've grown a few of the tomatoes on your (very impressive) list. I had completely forgotten about the Coeur di Bui, which is crazy because I was a complete evangelist for that one once upon a time, because it was such a beautiful shape, meaty, and perhaps the best tasting variety I've ever grown. Now I gotta think about growing it again!

My blight problems started 3 years ago, the result of 2 very wet summers. while my raised prevented wet feet on my plants, most of the other plots in the community garden aren't on raised beds. Septoria and early blight wiped out their tomatoes... and floated right over to mine as well. Last year I couldn't seem to shake early-season disease on all my heirlooms. I was pruning lower leaves proactively, removing affected foliage early on, watering with no splashing, using straw mulch, and still lost most of my plants halfway through the season. And wouldn't you know, the other plots with store-bought Better Boys, etc, had beautiful, healthy plants and tons of fruit. We're all organic, and no one even uses fungicides. So I'm wondering if bred-in hardiness can play a role in resistance.

Eggplant experiment #2 this year: I'm going to keep eggplants in grow bags, off the ground and under light cover, to see if I can dodge the flea beetles. Row covers on my eggplants in beds didn't work - the buggers slipped right under and skeletonized all the leaves!

stacy

You have a real challenge there, trying to grow heirlooms and not having control over what's around your own space. My uncle ran a community garden here 35 years ago and I had a plot there for two seasons.

I've been fighting blight for about 8 years. I've found that I can grow tomatoes in a new plot, and I can lower the problem, but not totally eradicate it by rotating crops. But it's apparent to me that you must rotate crops if you want to grow heirlooms today. I grew 10 different beefsteaks, a yellow pear and a yellow Kellogg's Breakfast tomato last year. I had two plants, each of most of those.

I've decided that I won't buy transplants in the future. So I grow my own from seed I saved, although I do add varieties from purchased seed. I've also decided to stick to heirlooms as much as I can, because it gives me the ability to save seed and in many cases they're the best tasting varieties.

I intentionally set 4 tomatoes out in mid June with the idea that I may get the big tomatoes that I seem to get in the first flush. That worked great. The plants were the last to start showing blight and it was minor. This year I plan to repeat that and try setting out a plant in the 3rd and 4th week of June.

It's my opinion that what you learn growing heirloom tomatoes will make you a much better gardener with your non heirloom varieties. If you can grow heirloom tomatoes you can grow anything! Grow at least a few in the middle of your plot, while leaving room for a few next year.

Hi Stacy,

We love Coeur di bui although our fruit has been a bit misshapen the flavor and production have been great. The last 3 tomatoes on my list are new to us and we will have to see how they grow in the NW. They came from a Jim "Tomato Jim" Wyant who takes the whole seed saving movement very seriously!

Happy New Years everyone! Leeks are up, hoophouse endwall is up, and we’ve been eating delicious indoor grown salad greens.

I have an admission to make. The ugly tomato I mentioned the other day, 12/29/18 that I said was an ugly tomato. It's really an eggplant!

Greetings and HNY Kevin,

This will be my first year planting leeks...had not planned to start them for a few weeks. Should I be getting seeds in?

Len - it’s still a little early here - I’m doing a test to try to get some early harvest under cover. A lot of people wait until mid January or later

And so ends another one ... https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5574214/veggie-tales-january-2019