Tomato seeds

gsxr1

I have done a little experiment which may seem very obvious to most of you.



this is my cherry tomato seedlings.

Half the seeds where from a packet . 20 seeds for 5 euro. rip off to be honest.


I took the other half of the seeds from here.



Squeezed out of half eaten cherry tomatoes from lidl.

1000s of seed for 1.79 euro.

They look the same. What should I expect from the lidl live seeds. They are growing at the exact same rate.

If it works I may never waste money of seed packets again..

looksee

Saving seeds yourself is a good idea, but it may not always work. There are two main issues afaik and I am not by any means an authority on this. Some fruits have been bred so that they are sterile, either they will have no seeds (seedless grapes) or the seeds will not grow. Also some fruits are produced by deliberate fertilisation of the flowers to get the exact variety required, so you cannot be sure what fruit will you get even if they flower.
Having said that, the experiment is worth it just for the interest, and you may get a great crop!

eth0_

Why would fruits be bred to have sterile seeds? Is it literally to stop people growing their own tomato plants..?

dardevle

eth0_ wrote: »

Is it literally to stop people growing their own tomato plants..?

thats exactly why....keep you coming back for more!!


a lot of the f1 hybrid varities, which are genetically modified are sterile... i would guess that gsxr1's 5 euro cherry tom's are probably f1, which would account for the price.



....

looksee

Yes, but sometimes it is incidental to the process and often it is to get rid of seeds as in grapes and bananas. Hybrids can cause sterile seeds and the plants are increased from cuttings. I am a bit vague about this, maybe someone with better knowledge will give better information.

Edit - I was answering EthO there, but dardevle snook in before me

darjeeling

Plant breeders often create inbred parental lines that are true-breeding, and then cross them to produce 'F1' (first filial generation) seeds that will yield a consistent and vigorous crop with a combination of characters from both parents. This is the case with tomatoes. The parental lines themselves wouldn't produce the most desirable tomato crop, and a cross of seeds from the F1 would produce an inconsistent crop, with a much greater degree of variability than the F1 due to the laws of Mendelian segregation.

Conveniently for the plant breeders, this also means that if you want nice, standard tomatoes with all the flavour, appearance etc. traits that they have selected, you have to buy your seed from them.

Here's what Wikipedia says.

Edit:

I'm fairly sure we planted seeds from shop-bought tomatoes years ago, and got all sorts of strangely-shaped and oddly-coloured fruits. The seeds might even have been from the F2 or F3 generation - I can't recall. Anyway, if you get tomatoes from your F1 fruit seeds, let us know.

gsxr1

this is a first time growing tomatoes. So im hoping all of them will survive.

I will keep yas posted as they mature. I honestly cant remember what side of the tray the lidl cherry tomatoes are on. I hope they all produce.



keep an eye on the thread.

magicbastarder

dardevle wrote: »

thats exactly why....keep you coming back for more!!

i don't think homegrown tomatoes are going to come close to competing with store-bought ones for a while anyway.

but take apples as an example - if you plant a bramley apple pip, it will not grow into a bramley apple tree. several reasons - a lot of apples are not self-fertile, so they have to cross with a different type of apple tree.

the pip which made a bramley apple tree is from say, trees X and Y, producing Z, the bramley. you now have to cross Z with another tree, say Q, to get a new pip. Z + Q does not equal Z.
this is why apple trees are propagated from grafts, not seeds. most apple trees grown from seed will not produce pleasant apples.

the original and only bramley tree ever grown from seed is in nottinghamshire.

Macy0161

gsxr1 wrote: »

Half the seeds where from a packet . 20 seeds for 5 euro. rip off to be honest.

20 Seeds for a fiver must be an F1 hybrid. Plenty of open pollinated ones that you'd get far far more seeds for less money!

I personally don't use F1 hybrids - they seem designed to produce gluts for the home gardener (which they are, as they're developed mainly for commercial producers), and taste isn't the priority, which imo is what growing your own is all about.

I haven't done much seed saving, but you can get info on methods for various veg from www.realseeds.co.uk. Irish Seed Savers also have a catalogue which includes Irish heritage varieties. Or the garden centres have non-F1 hybrids for better value than you paid.