Hey, guys. It's Brijette and welcome to the Kellogg Garden
YouTube Channel! Today, I'm going to show you here, on our
urban farm, how we save our seeds. So, we're going to talk a
lot about tomatoes because well, it's September. We've got
tons of tomatoes, and tomatoes are one of the easiest crops to
save seed from. So, what makes them so easy? Well, first of
all, it's really easy to know where the seeds are. So,
they're inside this juicy, delicious tomato. And also,
modern tomatoes don't cross pollinate very easily and
that's actually because, let's see if we can find a flower here,
modern flower tomatoes actually don't have the ability.
Their middle part here, is actually recessed
inside the flower, if you can see that, and so it's not as
easy for cross-pollination to happen. Now, another thing
to think of is, do you even really care? The reason why I
mentioned that is some of the coolest tomato varieties have
happened from accidental crossing. We love different shapes, and
colors, and flavors of tomatoes, and so when you're saving the
seed on your farm or you're in your garden, I don't think you
should worry too much about that because you might come up
with a new creation that you really love. So, something to
consider. So, we've got this amazing tomato here and it's
pretty soft. It's almost a little bit past its eating
stage and that's actually how you want it, and that's because
we want to replicate what happens in nature. So, typically, the
tomato overripens. It falls down onto the ground, it rots,
and that's actually what dissolves that little slippery
gelatinous sack that surround your seeds. That's actually a
germination inhibitor, and that's because inside the
tomato, it's moist and it's warm. That's the perfect
temperature to germinate, right? Well, how does nature
stop that from happening? It puts that little gelatinous
sack around the seed. Your job as a seed saver is to try to
get that little sack off and you do that by fermenting. So,
let's go take a look at how we do that. So, we're here in our
greenhouse and in the fall, the greenhouse pretty much just
becomes a place where we process and dry out our seeds.
So, I actually have, this is the great king of Siberia,
and I actually have some of this fermenting here. This is
probably going to be really yucky. Yup, there it is. And
basically, what I've done is I've cut the tomato open,
squeezed out the inside, and put it inside this very
stinky mix. So, we're going to cut this open. Seeds are here.
Basically, they get squeezed. Everything goes in there. It's
okay if some of these excess stuff. This doesn't have any
seeds on it. So, I might just feed that to the chickens just
as a little treat. Now, this has been fermenting for about 3
days and so it's ready. It's got a nice, stinky, fermenting
kind of look to it, and by doing it that way, you also separate
the seeds from the actual tomatoes. Now, it's important
to know, when you ferment your tomatoes, you don't add any
water. You literally let them ferment in their own juice just
as they would in nature. After about three days, they're
finished, and so you can use water to separate them.
Now, why am I adding all this water? Well, I like using the
spray because it's going to knock any seeds that are clinging to the
to the tomatoes off, and it's just going to agitate the water
quite a bit, and allow for the seeds to sink to the bottom. An
amazing thing about seeds is that when their embryo is fully
formed, they're very heavy and so they're going to sink to the
bottom, down here. Whereas seeds that do not have an
embryo are like light little boats and they're gonna float
to the top, and so by agitating them, and really separating them
from the tomato matter, they're going to sink to the bottom. So,
I'm going to use this little tool here to kind of just
get some of the big chunks. So, again, I'm not getting any
tomato seeds in here because they're all sitting at the
bottom, but what I am doing is picking up rotten tomato parts
here. If you do this in a mason jar, it's very easy for you to
see after a few days. All the tomato parts will be on the
top, floating, and sitting on the bottom is
going to be the seeds, which is really incredible. So, you can
see, there's no seeds in there. Maybe one or two but those are
not good so we don't want them anyways. So, I'm just going to
strain all this out, get the worst of it out, and now, we're
going to do what's called decanting and it's basically
where I just pour off the water and sitting at the bottom is
going to be the seeds.
And look at that! I always get nervous right before the end
like, oh no, did I pour them all off but they're always there.
There we have 'em. So, those are the seeds that have been
fermented, and we do that to take off the gelatinous sack
that's around them, and it also helps with seed-borne diseases.
So, you have better quality of seed when you ferment them, just
like nature does. Next, these seeds go over here and they get
dried. So, I've actually got seeds here that are drying,
and it's a very simple thing. I've got these guys on just
screen material and I just put this fan over them and it's very hot
in the greenhouse, which is great. So, I'm just going to let
this run, and it's so important that your seeds are completely
dry. If they have any moisture left on them, when you put them
in your container of choice, then, guess what? They're going to
mold. So, make sure they're completely dry. The way we do
that is we run this fan on them for anywhere for three to 4
days until they really feel dry and then we put them in dry
with desiccant packs that suck out any additional moisture. If
you don't do that, I promise you, you will be sorry. They'll
mold up. You'll open them next season and all your work will
have gone to waste. So, make sure you dry them. Let's talk
about how you store your seeds. So, you want to make sure you
store your seeds out of direct sunlight so not in the
greenhouse, not outside, not in a shed. I don't even recommend
you store them in the garage because the garage gets very hot
and very cold. You want to store them inside in a cool, dark
place and your seeds will last a whole lot longer. So, why do
you want to save your garden seeds? Well, it's really fun.
It's a great way to be connected to nature. Good way
to save a little bit of cash and you know, it's
just a really neat process. So, if you want to save your tomato
seeds, that's how you do it coming from me, a
professional seed saver. You're going to get the best
quality seeds if you ferment them.