Propagating the big red tomato

If you read my article about propagating the big orange tomato you would know that I accidentally killed off the entire batch of seedlings.  At the end of that article I mentioned how I went to the store on Monday, November 23rd, to buy another tomato to collect seeds from. Well, this article is about that tomato.  So, let's dive on in to this, shall we?

For lunch today I decided to have a BLT. Unfortunately, when I was at the store yesterday I forgot to buy the Lettuce. So, I dropped the L and had a bacon and tomato sandwich. Of course, I had no mayonnaise, so I settled for some sliced American cheese, instead.  Now, that I went way off topic, the reason for all this was, since I decided to cut up the tomato, I figured I would collect the seeds from it.

Once I upload the videos, you will be able to see what I did. I sliced up the tomato and scraped the seed sacs into a small ice cream bowl. Once they were all collected, I rinsed them in the sink using a fine metal mesh strainer. This got off quite a bit of the juice, but it left behind some of the pulpy material. I scraped the seeds and pulp into an old plastic egg cooker we have and added some water.

The idea is that some of the pulp and the bad seeds will float to the top. This makes it easier to scoop it out and dispose of it. The rest is left to ferment for a couple of days. Once fermented, all that unwanted material floats to the top leaving the seeds at the bottom. I will then dump out the fermented material, rinse and then strain the seeds one last time. From that point I can either germinate them or allow them to dry on a paper towel, so they can be saved. If stored properly, seeds will last as long as five years or so. My intention is to plant these seeds, but I may learn from my previous mistakes and store a few in case I have to start over again.

UPDATE: November 28, 2015

Well, I rinsed off the seeds getting rid of all the fermented material. I put the seeds back into some clean water to ferment some more because there was still some material to get rid of and I was too lazy to pick it out.

UPDATE: December 7, 2015

I finally got around to planting about half of my seeds. I had left them sitting and they dried nicely. I had not intended to do that, but I have been busy with a job search recently. Anyway, I had to remove some pepper seedlings from the egg cartons where they germinated. So, I replaced them with tomato seeds. Once they germinate I will start getting them into the sunlight, from time to time, to encourage growth.

UPDATE: December 10, 2015

This morning I noticed that some of the seedlings have started sprouting. Some of them have popped straight up and seem to be doing well. Some of the others didn't break through. I looked and realized the soil had caked and hardened. So, I took an awl and gently poked through the soil to loosen it up.

Newly sprouted tomato seedlings .The cells with a single seedling are peppers.

As for my germination rate, well I am not all that sure. The reason is because I put a bunch of seeds into each cell. I had quite a few seeds and wanted to make sure I had seedlings. Even having done that I still had quite a few left over that I put into an envelope for storage. Getting back to my germination rate, I would say it was pretty good in the cells that sprouted.

I know I said I would put them into direct sunlight, but I am rethinking that. I may wait till they get a little bigger first. Or maybe I will put them into direct sunlight for an hour in the early morning hours.

A close-up of the tomato seedlings. You can see how there is more than one per cell.