Tomato Seed Saving

Tomato Photos:

I began saving tomato seeds last weekend from a few varieties that were ready. I also made sure to set up my homemade camera light box for getting closeups of each tomato variety.

Dad's Compost Tomato, originally discovered in 2007, very good yeilds throughout the seeason.

Note: These seeds are very small and some will go right through a fine strainer!

"Crazy" tomato known for early cherries with large amounts on each vine.

The two photos above are "Early Wonder" which has a wonderful rosy-red coloring.

These two are of Striped Cavern. Bright orange stripes outside with its seeds looking almost like a strawberry in the center of the tomato - very tasty!

These are suppose to be "Super Snow White" but they grew to be a golden yellow here this season... Soil conditions?

These Alaska tomatoes were very impressive this year. Mostly golfball sized.

An interesting tomato plant "Ildi" is an early cold climate type with both round and pear-shaped fruit. Many heavy clusters on each plant.

And last for this post, Black From Tula. It's an odd thing to see growing in the garden, as the fruits look like they're going bad with their brownish-red color!

Saving Tomato Seeds:

Many people shy away from saving tomato seeds for three reasons; First, the fermentation process takes time and can be made overly complicated. Second, the fermentation stinks and will attract many fruit flies to that area! And third, many folks don't enjoy having redish-orange under their fingernails for a week after processing a few hundred tomatoes!



Ah, but I enjoy the whole thing. I've learned how to simplify the whole process and take any guesswork out of it. I'll outline the steps below:

1: Work outside, preferably on a sunny day to get the tomatoes nice and warm. You'll need a table, a large soup pan, a large strainer with big 1/4 inch sized holes, some containers to ferment the seeds in (I use plastic cottage cheese and yogurt containers) and most impotantly your garden hose with a nice strong shower nozzle setting.

2: Use a paring knife to score each tomato with an "X" on the bottom and squeeze the seeds through the strainer into the soup pan. Disgard the tomato skins off to the side. I tend to do about 10 to 20 tomatoes for each variety.




3: After all tomatoes have been seeded, take the hose and try to blast a bit through the strainer to force more seeds into the pan. Remove strainer and clean throroughly with the hose.

4: Spray a bunch more water into the seed pan and really mix things up with the pressure. Fill the pan up about half full and let settle for a few minutes.

5: Important thing to note - The good seed is settled to the bottom. With that in mind, take the soup pan off to the side and slowly tilt it to let the water run out. This is kinda like panning for gold, you want the good stuff to settle on the bottom while you dump the rest of the junk out of the top of the mix.

6: Dump the rest into plastic containers and be sure to have enough water to make the container 3/4 full. Be sure to label with permanent marker and place on a warm shelf to ferment for one week.




7: A week has zipped by and look at all of those happy fruit flies flying around those stinky, mold-covered tomato seeds! Using the same large soup pan, hold your nose and dump the moldy mess of fermented tomato seeds into the pan.

8: Use your trusty hose to fill the pan half way with water then do the same "panning for gold" technique of letting the junk pour off the top while the good seed will remain on the bottom.

9: Use a small strainer to catch all of the good seed and then spread the seeds onto a screen in the sunshine. Let the seeds dry out for about 4 to 6 hours in direct sun.


10: Use a spatula to get the semi-dried seeds off of the screen and place them onto wax paper. Never use paper towels! Once a tomato seed dries on a paper towel, it's impossible to get it off without taking some of the paper towel with it!


The seeds need to dry completely indoors. I use a specially built seed dryer which is surrounded by a protective galvanized mesh to make it mouse-proof. Depending on temperature and humidity, it can take months for seeds to dry completely - usually well into the wood burning season.


Happy Seed Saving!

:)

Mid August Report

Garden Journal, Mid August Report

I’ve given up hope for the Squash & Pumpkins this season...



The solo Iran pumpkin plant has buds, but refuses to flower. The Zucchini has flowers that rot. And the Blue Hubbard Squash barely makes any flowers. This one blossom obviously has a mildew problem. I had big 10 to 20 pound Blue Hubbards picked last season by this time. Not a chance this year – but no matter, I saved hundreds of seeds from those 2007 monsters.



Very disappointing… The main reason is too much rain. This has been an unusually wet summer. June 2008 had double the amount of rain recorded than June of 2007. Here we are only half-way through August, 2008 and it has rained more than double than all of August, 2007!


Tomatoes are doing fairly well, but the plants are dieing-off too early in the sunniest garden out front – not sure why. I must say however, that this was my best year ever for raising tomatoes as far as them being ready so early.

I’ve already selected a few handfuls of ripe Alaska Tomatoes and began saving the first seeds of the season back on August 12th. They’re fermenting a lot better in August then they do in October!

I also picked a couple of Early Wonders, which are really pretty to look at with their rosy red to pink coloring. I picked and 2 or 3 Striped Caverns which have unique yellow & orange stripes.

The big garden has more shade, so all of the tomato plants there are still green and happy. Happiest of them all are the Debaro (Italian Roma) plants which are getting to be over 7 feet tall! At this time, all of the Debaro tomatoes are still green.

I’ve selected one of the Straight-Eight cucumbers to let grow for seed. These two plants are still producing (slowly) which is impressive in the excessively rainy conditions.

Most of the beans did well this season (the ones that weren’t eaten by the %$@*# ground hog!) Here's a photo I got of the little fury bastard from my 2nd level back porch with a zoom lens...

I’m really impressed with the Vermont Cranberry beans. They’re definitely the tallest and most prolific this season. Man, they really get colorful the more they mature! I’m letting these grow to seed for a much larger crop in 2009.

The Sunflowers out front are doing well. Quite a diverse group! I have one giant at the beginning of the row which is about 10 feet tall. In the middle there are multi-flowering smaller sunflowers, and on the other end, there are smaller (six feet tall) sunflowers which are dieing-off and soon ready to save for seed.


Last but not least, my Jerusalem Artichokes are about 6 feet tall and beginning to flower. Not sure what's better, eating the tubers in October or getting photos like this one of the flowers.

:)

08/08/08

For some reason, I’ve decided to post a short blog tonight because of this date: 8/8/08. It’s a rhyme of time and I think it’s great!

Garden notes, all be them brief & are as follows:

First Alaska tomatoes are turning orange/red, as are the Early Wonder tomatoes.
I also have a few orange Striped Caverns.

I picked my 2nd straight 8 cucumber and left one at this time to mature for seed saving.

The Iran Pumpkin plant is starting to blossom – with as many as 8 new flowers budding on a short stem of about a foot in length.

The Dragon’s Tongue beans are almost past but still good to pick.

The Yellow beans are young & ready.

The green Empress beans are big and need to be picked.

The Vermont Cranberry beans are happily growing all the way up the 10 foot deer fence and many beans are there – but I’m not picking them until they are dried.

Same goes for the Charlevoix beans, they’re ready as a green bean, but I want the mature seeds.

Looks like next two weeks might be good to get first squash & zucchini started.

The weather is weird for July & August 2008 because of the almost daily rains & thunderstorms. If this keeps up, New England will be more like a rain forest ten years from now!

:)

Stormy July & St. John's Wort Tincture

Today was a surprisingly stormy day. A massive line of thunderstorms rolled through here between 2:30pm and 4pm. It seemed to split and the worst was to my south – up over the mountain toward the towns of Blandford and Otis. Check out the radar below.

There was a brief period of small pea-sized hail, but no strong winds here. Bad news is that I won’t bother going outside to tie up the remaining tomatoes because everything is soaked.
Other than the storms, I don’t have much to add for today. However, I didn’t get around to posting last weeks entry, so it will follow below:


Last Sunday, July 20th around 12:30 PM, I simply gave up working outside in the gardens. It was 85 degrees outside with the humidity at 60%.

I managed to roto-till the eastern-most garden to get the weeds down for the pumpkins, squash & cucumbers –which are beginning to run their vines. The less weeds the better.

I should have listened to the Cicada bugs first… they were busy making noise in the treetops all the while I was outside. After all, you only hear Cicadas when the weather is hot & humid. If you want to learn more about this LOUD summer bug, there’s a good bit of info on this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

The oregano is ready for harvesting. I say this because it’s nearly 3 feet tall and starting to bud. I swear these barely-developed buds have the most intense flavor. I’ll strip the stalks and place them on a few of the screens in my home-made seed/herb dryer.

This seed/herb dryer was built out of necessity last September. I was saving seeds from cucumbers out in the garage when they got completely devoured by mice! Hence the armor made of wire mesh which surrounds 3 shelves of drying screens, complete with a door and a latch to secure the contents! I plan on adding more shelves soon because 3 simply isn’t enough anymore.

This 2008 gardening season truly is the year of the tomato. I’ve never seen so many volunteer tomatoes in all of the gardens. It will be interesting to watch them and see who they are… I only grew a few varieties in 2007, so my bet is that they’ll be either Striped Cavern, Great White or Debaro.

My first and favorite herb to tincture is Wild St. John’s Wort. I’ve got it growing all around the house, in the gardens and select spots not mowed in the lawn. I’ve personally found that this herb works for me as a mood (happiness) enhancer. If taken in small doses over time (6 to 8 weeks), I’m convinced that it does wonders for the winter blues.
More information can be found here:
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/stjohns-wort-000276.htm

*** Disclaimer ***
Know your plants - DO NOT GUESS! If you’re not sure what St. John’s Wort looks like, don’t try to harvest it. One of the best ways to identify herbs is to buy a field guide such as this:
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Medicinal-Plants-Herbs/dp/0395988144

A good tip for identifying St. John’s Wort is to pick a green leaf from the plant and hold it to the sky. If you see a bunch of tiny holes (perforations) in the leaf, chances are it’s Common St. John’s Wort hence its botanical name - Hypericum perforatum.

Let the tincturing begin!

Step 1
Harvest the plants with a pair of garden scissors about 10 to 12 inches above the ground – you only want the greenest leaves and flower tops, so cut above any faded yellow leaves. Plants will vary in size and some will be reddish & discolored. I avoid the discolored plants. Only do 5 to 10 plants at a time because step 2 takes a while…

Step 2
The toughest part about tincturing is preparing the fresh herb. St. John’s Wort is a bit of work because both the flowers and the leaves are useful. So I first pluck the flowers, then remove all of the leaves from the many branches. By the time I’ve got a large bowl full of flowers & leaves my fingers are covered in a sticky-green mess – the price to pay for a mid-winter smile.

Step 3
Now all that’s needed is some 80 proof vodka, a blender, and some clean storage jars. Add one cup of vodka to blender then add the prepared St. John’s Wort only as high as halfway of the blender. Start the blender at lowest speed and add speed gradually. You will have to add vodka slowly and once the right amount is there, the whole mixture will begin to spin. Keep adding speed and work your way up to top speed to thoroughly mix the herb with the vodka.

This process usually takes 3 to 5 minutes. It’s important to break up the herb as much as possible because it makes it easier for the vodka to absorb as much of useful properties found in St. John’s Wort – therefore, a stronger tincture -also known as an extract.

Once the St. John’s Wort has been completely pulverized and mixed with the vodka it can be added to storage jars (I save my old spaghetti sauce jars for this.)

Step 4
Fill each jar about ¾ full and let sit for about 10 minutes. After mixture has settled, there must be at least one inch of lighter colored (alcohol) mixture on top, if not, more vodka should be added because the mixture won’t be properly preserved in the following weeks.


Step 5
Make some cubboard space and store jars in a cool, dark space or you may leave the jars on the counter and cover with a thick towel to keep light out. * Impotant – be sure these jars are very convienient to access every day!

Step 6
It’s important to shake each jar once a day for the first week. Nothing too crazy, just shake for a few seconds and replace jar to its spot. The reason for this is to keep the contents of the jar from settling too much and constantly extracting. After one week of daily shakes, you can skip afew days between shaking the jars. Let sit for 4 to 6 weeks.

Step 7
It’s time to open the jars and strain the contents into new jars. I use two strainers for this, one has holes, the other is of a finer screen. But once you are left with the wet glob of stuff the strainers catch, always scoop it up and use a towel or cheese cloth to squeeze as much liquid as possible into your new jars!

Step 8
Now you have the completed extract in the 2nd round of jars. Further straining is up to you. I like to put the mixture into dropper bottles for easier dispensing.

How to use:
I like to put 2 or 3 dropper-fulls (about 2 teaspoons) into a glass of seltzer water as a standard dose per day starting in December. Storage isn’t an issue because it will keep for many years – however, you’ll probably have run out of it before St. John’s Wort is in bloom next year!

:)

July is hard to keep up with...

Ah yes, the beans are going nuts in July! Check out the 10 foot fence above, these Vermont Cranberry beans are really taking off. The fence used is called a "deer fence" mounted between two poles.

The photo above is a simple (yet beautiful) bean blossom. In about two weeks, these plants will sport many healthy beans.

The Iran Pumpkin (sole survivor of six seeds sent via a Seed Savers Member) plant is now ready to burst free of its protective cage. I'm hoping for at least one pumpkin from this plant so I can save as many seeds as possible.

Now this plant is cool! I bought these heirloom seeds because I liked the "Moon & Stars" effect on the melons - hence the same name of this plant. But now that I am growing these, I'm smiling at the fact that the leaves have the same yellow dots when they're young & growing out.

My final comment for this entry is of the seeds which I purchased from Amazon.com via Hirt's Seeds.

I thought I bought purple cauliflower, but now that these plants are maturing, they really look to be more like broccoli... Huh?

I guess I will let them grow for a few more weeks. Looks a lot like broccoli to me so far.

:)

Summer is here!

It hit me from out of the blue, I went to Google around 7pm, Friday night when I noticed their "first day of summer" logo - wow, me of all people to not realize that the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, was here! I immediately went outside with my camera and used the light of the slow setting sun to get photos for this next entry.

May flowers? Some, but in the Northeast, JUNE FLOWERS dominate! Many wild flowers are still in bloom in the lawn (as seen in the June 9th entry), and many flowers can be seen in the garden as well. Yellow flowers from the Mustard Greens, Strawberries, German Giant Radishes -- and pictured below, the amazing light purple flowers from the giant Sakurajima Radishes!

On June 19th, I photographed my first ripe strawberry. These are from Guerney's, called "Whopper" for their large size. This is their 2nd season here, but I need to buy some bird netting if I expect to harvest enough for saving.

I've got a poultry fence up for the Oregon Sugar Peas to climb. Funny, the package reads that trellacing isn't necessary, but I disagree. It's much easier to weed them when they're trained on a fence, otherwise the runners will cling to the nearest weeds for support.

Many types of beans have been planted this year. This is a late bloomer of the Vermont Cranberrys. The 2nd photo is of a Charlevoux red kidney bean.

I'm nervous about my Iran Pumpkin. I was sent 6 seeds - only one made it! Now I have a small fence guarding the sole survivor. Apparently, the demand for the Iran Pumpkin shot up because of an article called;

"Three Phunky Pumpkins" - which appeared in Mother Earth News in the fall of 2007. In fact, that's how I first learned of this rare plant myself.

Nearby, I have Moon & Stars watermelons coming up. They already have yellow speckles on the leaves. I decided to plant another hill last weekend.

Lesson learned this year is to NOT start squash, pumpkins, melons & especially cuccumbers early. This isn't necessary because they only like to germinate and grow when temps begin to hit 80 degrees. The peat pots don't work well with them either.

After a shakey start, the purple cauliflower plants seem stable and strong - although, I lost six plants so far. I won't start them as early next season because they were very thin and curly at the base. I planted them as I would tomatoes by digging a small trench and laying them on their sides and burrying them up to the first leaves. Strange, but it seems to have worked.

Of all the 13 varieties of tomatoes planted this year, the Ildi (an early yellow grape tomato) has the most unusual leaves. They appear to be curled, making the plant look like it's dried-up, when in fact it's doing fine.

As of this week, I have 36 tomatoes staked with green bamboo (painted) stakes which I purchased locally

(6 packages of 6 bamboo for $1.89 ea.). I still need to dig out last year's bamboo stakes that I stored for the winter.

The weather has been kind to the gardens with rain no less than every other day. I had quite the scare though back on Monday, June 16th, when widespread hail dime to nickle-sized was falling for up to 10 minutes in both north & south counties. Luckily, no damage to anything seen here.

:)