How to Preserve Heirloom Tomatoes

Master Gardener Fred Hoffman teaches you how to preserve heirloom tomatoes and maintain the fruit's look and taste over the years.

Everyone’s a farmer when it comes to there own backyard, try this tips For Doing it Home Grown. Heirloom Tomatoes, there gaining in popularity, more and more farmers and backyard gardeners are going this beauties of antiquity. Some Heirloom Tomatoes goes all the way back to the 19th century. A reason for there popularity, the size, the color, the flavor, the shapes but most off all it’s the taste of Heirloom Tomatoes. Nurseries now carry more than a dozen different varieties of Heirloom Tomatoes but there are plenty more available over a hundred varieties available as seeds from specialty seed companies. The choice is yours, find one you like and then you can save the seeds for next year, if you follow a few simple rules. We’re at the table where I’ll show you how to save Heirloom Tomatoes seeds. The first rule to remember, grow the plant you want in isolation from other tomato plants so it doesn’t cross pollinate. Otherwise, you might end up with something like this, a mystery tomato. To save Heirloom Tomatoes seeds pick the ripest juiciest one you ca find, this is one of my favorite Heirloom Tomatoes, its called the blood butcher. Its from England and dates back to the 1800’s. To save the seeds, you want to use a serrated knife and cut across the equator of the tomato exactly in half and then our going to squeeze the contents into a clean plastic glass container. You see all that juice, that’s why its called bloody butcher. After you’ve squeeze the pulp into the container, take a lead and apply it loosely. You want to keep this into a warm dark location for about two or three days. This allows it to ferment and that will dissolve the gel coating around the seeds but don’t leave it fore more than three days in here. Otherwise the seeds might germinate. Just like the old prospectors use to pan for gold, Heirloom Tomatoes growers can pay in for the greatest tomato seeds in the world. First of all you take the big chunks out and just leave behind the seeds and the liquid. Then you’ll strain the liquid and the tomato seeds through a good size strainer into your compo scan and what’s left, beautiful Heirloom Tomatoes seeds for the next growing season. To save the seeds is you need a dry coffee filter or a paper plate and you’ll just scrape off the tomato seeds from the strainer into the dry coffee filter. You’ll need to keep it there in a dry cool place for about two to seven days, you may have to take your fingers and sort of work them around to loosen them up but at the end of that time, your going to have some very nice seeds. Be sure to store your tomato seeds in a cool dry location like under your bed. Put them in a glass jar, that’s perfect and be sure you put a label on it so you don’t forget what they are. These tomato seeds, there going to last five to seven years, that’s allot of growing seasons for you to enjoy the taste of home grown tomatoes and nothing beats the taste of an Heirloom Tomatoes.