Tomato, Tomato, Tomato!

When saving tomato seed, particularly different sorts of tomato you must label them!

Black Russian seed.

Because yes, when you first scoop out the seed it looks pretty obvious which cup is holding the Golden Nugget seed and which has the Black Russian.

Golden Nugget seed.

But after a few days really they’re much of a muchness!

fermenting tomato seed

And then you clean off all that scum, rinse ’em about and you amazingly have beautiful seed ready to dry.  So hopefully they were labeled so you know which is what!

clean tomato seed

If you’re at all interested or wondering, I’ve been able to go back to my old garden to harvest my tomatoes and necessary seeds.  The plants are pretty tarn sad now but I’ve managed to get what I need, fortunately I have a few plants that stood up to the pysillid invasion pretty well so am only saving seed from those plants.  Hopefully they will be good and strong for next season and I will have a good load of heirloom seedlings to sell starting Labour Weekend.

I wonder if there’s anyone reading this that bought some of my seedlings last year?  How’re they doing/done?  Apologies to Green Zebra purchasers, because I don’t know about you but my green zebras were very red!  Second time this has happened to me, first time I sent the seed pack back, they sent another and they look the blooming same!

Black Russian

But I’m very happy with my Black Russians this year.  I’ve been saving their seed for years now.  And making divine tomato sauce with them too.  I’ll put my recipe up soon hey.

Drying tomatos

And here’s my Alma de Borghese ready to be dried.  Last year I scooped out all the seeds before drying.  I did trays and trays of them!  This year frankly I couldn’t be arsed and they turned out fine!  I sprinkle thyme, salt and garlic on them then put them in the oven on the lowest temperature for about 3 hours.  Because there’s a risk of botulism with sun-dried tomatos in oil I toss them in olive oil when done and throw them in the freezer.  Makes them much easier to cut up to throw into meals too.