Posts Tagged ‘tomato seeds’

The tomato season is upon us and it is time to think about next years crop as well, not just enjoying the well deserved harvest. You can save your tomato seeds with a little work very easily. Open pollinated and heirloom varieties are most suitable to save the seeds, as the hybrid ones could not come true the next season, as being a hybrid they have been produced by crossing 2 different parent plants.

Getting the best seeds:

Choose the healthiest plants and the healthiest fruits to save the seeds from. Leave the fruits to ripen fully on the plant. The easiest to get your tomato seeds out to cut the tomato across the equator and scoop the seeds out into a small jar, bowl. The seeds protected by the jelly like liquid, this is what you have to get rid of nicely.

Smelly business:

What happens in nature is that the ripe tomato drops on the floor, the fruit rots while the seeds inside go through a fermentation process. This is what you have to speed up a little. Got rid of the flesh, great, now you can ferment the seeds a bit!

Poor a little water over the seeds, make sure you have the jelly bit as well, this will help the fermentation. Cover the jar with a paper towel, or plastic, if you use plastic make sure you make some wholes on it. Place the jar in a windowsill and leave it for 4-5 days. Preferably somewhere out of your way as during the process mould will form and the mixture will be quite smelly.

Separating the tomato seeds:

To get the seeds out of the horrible fermented liquid add lots of water to it and stir it well, often you will be able to remove the top of the mix before adding the water as it will become very mouldy and the seeds will sink on to the bottom of the jar. Let the tomato seeds sink to the bottom again after stirring the mix, and then pour the seed liquid mixture through a sieve and wash the seeds under running water.

Dry the tomato seeds on a plate on your windowsill, or anywhere dry. Make sure you don’t force the drying process by exposing the seeds to some heat. The seeds should be viable for quite a long time, 5-7 years. Store them in a cool and dry place.

Enjoy your tomato seed saving experience and have a great harvest over the weekend!

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is a culinary herb from the family Lamiaceae. Originally native to India where it is cultivated for thousands of years. Basil grows wild now in the Mediterranean and used mainly in Italian cuisine, salads, sandwiches. The Italian tomato dishes being so popular here in the UK it is a must to grow some basil together with your tomatoes.

Sowing the basil seeds

If you want to grow the herbs on your windowsill the best time is to sow is March. If you planning to transplant the plants outside later on or if you will grow the basil in an unheated greenhouse then wait until late April.
Sow the basil seeds into small, about 7 cm, pots or a seed tray or into bigger pots if you do not want to transplant them later on; 0.5cm deep. Keep the compost moist by watering from underneath, so the tiny seeds and seedlings will not be disturbed. Keep them at a temperature of 15 Celsius and above.

Transplanting the basil seedlings

When the plants are large enough to handle, 3-4 inches tall, you can prick them out carefully and transplant them into bigger pots, or why not try to grow them in a nice windowbox. Creating a herb windowbox will add a nice scent and a useful feature to your patio area.

Growing basil successfully require plenty of sunshine and warmth. If you plant the basil outside make sure that you choose the sunniest location in your garden. The plants like a bit of dry condition and lots of sunshine. This will help to bring out the best flavour possible from your basil plants.
Growing them around the tomato plants is a common practice by many gardener. Leave about 10cm between the plants, so they have plenty of space to mature.

If the basil plants wilted from lack of water they will recover fairly quickly when watered properly. Make sure that the leaves do not get much water as water on the leaves can encourage fungal diseases to appear on the plants.

Harvesting

You can start using the basil leaves quite early, gently pinch the biggest leaves when the plants are about 15cm tall. Do not cut the whole stem as this will stop the plant growing. When the plants grow to 20-30cm tall you can pinch out the growing tip to encourage the plants to grow more bushy. Remove any flowers as they appear, this will help the plants to concentrate their energy on growing more delicious leaves.

The different blend of essentials oils (most important is the eugenol in the sweet basil) are responsible for the different taste of the many basil varieties. The most common Mediterranean variety is the Sweet Genovese.

Most of us enjoy the basil in tomato based Italian dishes. Add the fresh leaves only at the last moment as the cooking will destroy the flavour of the basil. The dried basil looses most of its flavour too, if you want to store basil leaves your best choice is freezing. Just place a bunch of leaves into a small plastic bag and pop it into the freezer.
If you have a sunny windowsill or a heated greenhouse you can enjoy this lovely culinary plant, called by many as the king of herbs, from March to October.



Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis), often called English or garden marigold is most probably native to southern Europe, although its long cultivation history can shade this statement. Commonly grown in every Mediterranean countries and here in the UK too, for centuries.

Marigolds grown as hardy annual flower and can easily self sown so don’t be surprised to have the plants appear the next year. The leaves are oblong, 5-10 cm long, slightly waved or toothed and have tiny hairs.

Cultivated as a flower in many garden, but can be a really useful herb. The seeds can be sown directly outdoors in May, or propagated in the greenhouse from April. The beautiful seedlings alone worth growing these wonderful plants.

The leaves and the petals are edible and used widely in cosmetics, medicines. Pot marigold is a well known and really versatile herb in herbal medicine. It is, above all, a remedy for skin problems and is applied externally to bites and stings. The cosmetic industry uses the extracts in different cosmetics, because the content of saponins and essential oils. The flowers and the leaves are antiseptic. The flowers are used fresh or dried. For drying the petals is best to harvest the flowers when they are fully open. The edible yellow dye in the petals is a saffron substitute and used to colour and flavour rice and soups. The leaves can be used in salads when young.

Pot Marigolds are pungently scented and attract hoverflies (aphid eaters) to your garden. Commonly grown as a companion plant with tomatoes and the marigold will repel the white flies which cause problems in many greenhouses.

It is commonly know as dry set. During the fertilisation period, the pollen dries out. When this happens only miniature fruits are formed and they will not grow any bigger. Usually the high temperature and the dry atmosphere to blame for such an incident. It can also be caused by infertile pollen. To prevent this to happen to your tomatoes, you should open the ventilation of the greenhouse regularly, especially in the middle of the day. If you don’t have an automated system installed on your greenhouse and you know that you will be out all day,  it is better to leave the ventilation open in the morning. In very dry conditions you can create some mist around the tomato plants by spraying some water around them, don’t overdo this as fungal disease love dump too, or just poor some water on the floor of your greenhouse to make the air humid.

Come sowing time! Spring is approaching fast and everyone is getting ready to sow some tomato seeds. They are fairly easy to grow from seed and if you have a warm windowsill in your kitchen then the germination will not be a problem.

For the tastiest fruits many gardener grow the tomatoes in a greenhouse, polytunnel or even in a conservatory. However outside growing is rewarding too, just make sure you grow the plants in the warmest, sheltered area of your plot, garden.

Sowing the tomato seeds

Ideally label and fill a small pot or a seedtray with seed sowing compost, firm down and water. Scatter the seeds thinly as most of them will germinate be careful not to over sow at this stage. Place the pot on a windowsill or warm light shelf to germinate, and within 2 weeks, you should see seedlings, and they will be big enough in around 4 weeks to move on to individual pots. Sow seeds about a cm deep, keep the temperature 12-25 Celsius and the seeds germinate within 14 days. Make sure that you keep the compost moist during the entire growing process, and warmth is very important too. If you sow the seeds outside in an unheated greenhouse or propagator, wait until all risk of frost has passed in your area. And do not worry you can sow them as late as end of April, the plants will go faster in the hopefully warm spring and you just have a slightly later crop.

Move the tomato plants by gently holding the seedlings by their stalk and carefully moving them out with the help of a dibber or such like. Grow the plants on for 3-4 weeks before transplanting them to the final position after all risk of frost has passed.

When the roots are showing at the bottom of the pots it’s time to transplant the tomatoes.

Moving into their final position

Once the plants have 6-8 pairs of true leaves (more importantly when there is no frost expected), then it is time to move your tomatoes to a growing bag, border of your greenhouse or a warm fertile place in your garden. Break up the compost in the bag and scoop out some so that the root ball fit in the hole. Water well and place it in a warm spot. Oh and make sure you made some holes in the bottom of the bag for the excess water.

If you are growing indeterminate/cordon tomatoes, then you will need to support the plants with a cane and tie the plants to it carefully.

Ideally tomatoes grow on one single stem, expect the bush varieties, so snap out any shoots that grown in leaf joints, and once your plant has produced four or five trusses of flowers, pinch out the growing tip (the very top of the tomato plant). Doing this will ensure that all the growing energy is put into producing fruit rather than plant growth. You will need to keep doing this as the plant will try and grow more sideshoots. You also need to feed once a week with fertiliser, and water daily, or even twice a day in dry and sunny spells.

These are just our recommendations, individual growing conditions affect the germination of the seeds and the growth of the plants.

Cherokee purple tomato was widely grown in South America by the Cherokee Indians. The colour of the fruits is deep purple, dark red with green neck. Exceptionally good taste, in fact considered by many the best tasting tomato ever. Well the Russian black prince tomato and the black krim tomato are up for that title too, you just have to grow them and see the results yourself.

It is one of the most famous black/purple tomatoes. Well in coloration the black tomatoes really only purple, we can not expect a heirloom tomato to be black really. The fruits are quite large, rather beefsteak style, and the taste is really worth growing these lovely tomatoes.

What is heirloom you might ask. Well heirloom has many definitions, and by experts it is considered that all the varieties which can be traced back to the 1950s could be described as a heirloom variety. They are definitely open pollinated, which means that you can save the seeds from the fruits and the next generation will be the same as the previous one. While with the hybrid varieties it is not the case, but that is the subject of an other post. So if you want to try one of the most flavoursome heirloom tomatoes out there, we have a few in our shop. Pink Brandywine, Black Krim just to name a few.