Supermarket fruit to seedlings - timescale

[Eoghan]

Looking to start tomatoes for polytunnel and struggling to find my wife's favourite variety locally.

Anyway planning to purchase fruit in the supermarket and dry them and plant them.

How quickly can this be done?

I will dry the seeds then maybe put them in the fridge for a week before planting. Anyone got experience of how quickly this can be done or tips?

[ESBkevin]

We bought some baby plumb toms out of season from a supermarket a couple of years ago and they were particularly sweet, so I sacrificed one for the seed. iirc they lay on a kitchen towel on the kitchen windowsill for a few weeks then got 3 days in the fridge before sowing. I sowed the lot and got far too many germinations which went on to produce healthy plants and lovely fruit.
I would think a week+ to dry them out and a shock/cold session before planting means 14-21 days to planting. At least do half and save half for a second attempt in case they fail 3 weeks later.

[veggiechicken]

Hi Eoghan and welcome

Firstly, you need to know the variety of tomato that you are buying and check that its not F1 - you can usually do that online or ask us. If its F1 it may not grow into the tomato that you wife likes.

You may like to see my experiment from last year with Angelle tomatoes https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...ent_99354.html

[Small pumpkin]

Welcome to the vine

Here’s another link.

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...und_95572.html

No need to put tomato seeds in the fridge. Well I never have.

If I didn’t mention it in the other thread. The tomatoes I grow weren’t very nice.

[nickdub]

Pretty simple - pick the best and ripest tomato - scrape out the seeds into a small bowl - fill the bowl with water and rub the seeds so that the jelly-like flesh around each one is washed away. If you were storing them you'd then dry them, say on a piece Paper on a radiator, but if you want you could just sow them straight a way, as you would bought tomato seed.

As has already been said if the tomatoes you begin with are F1 or F2, then the plants you get will differ in some ways from their parent.

[Eoghan]

Thanks for the welcome but it's more of a return

Noticed that LIDL now have their seeds in. I bought five packets of flower seeds for £1 (multibuy)

They had a cherry tomato seed mix but it was 15 seeds? (average) Wife still fancies the piccolo tomatoes though.

I was probably here some 15 years ago when I put up the polytunnel. Just recovered it last autumn so am rejoining.

[veggiechicken]

Piccolo tomatoes..................https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...oes_92329.html